


Forelsket

by drinkbloodlikewine, whiskeyandspite



Series: Ya'aburnee [6]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alcohol Addiction, Alcoholism, Angst, Happy Ending, M/M, Recovery, Slow Burn, Withdrawal, rebuilding a relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-15
Updated: 2014-10-15
Packaged: 2018-02-20 12:21:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 25,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2428556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drinkbloodlikewine/pseuds/drinkbloodlikewine, https://archiveofourown.org/users/whiskeyandspite/pseuds/whiskeyandspite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Everything in the way Will watches Hannibal betrays his doubts, in Hannibal and moreso in himself, that Hannibal would still be there. </i>
</p><p>This takes place <i>immediately</i> after the events of <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/1802689">Saudade</a>.</p><p><b>Forelsket</b>: /forɛlskəd/, [fɒˈɛlsɡ̊əð], the word for when you start to fall in love. A euphoria in a sense; the beginning of love. <i>Danish</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So... we wrote this immediately after we wrote Saudade, but we decided that it was just us having a bit of an angstfest and just loosing some nerves and tension so we never touched it again. Till about 2 weeks ago when we reread it and realized that we actually quite like what we did and we couldn't let our Ya'aburnee boys go just yet.
> 
> As always, with us, it gets worse before it gets better. Let them work it out on their own - just join us for the ride. We promise it will be worth it.

When Will jerks awake this time, it’s morning, and he’s alone.

The doors are still open, letting in air still cool from the night and the sound of the beach, waves upon the shore over and over. His chest tightens, a pressure in his throat that transcends the usual nausea, a pain he knows won’t go away.

Perhaps he’s finally lost his mind, maybe it’s finally happened.

A sound comes from the kitchen, a soft clank of cheap bowls against the counter. And this time, Will wonders if he’s fallen out of time instead, moved in reverse and woken up somewhere he actually wants to be. Soon a dog will trot up, lick his face. Molly will gently scold him for staying up late reading, or tying lures, or watching television.

Any minute now.

And yet nothing comes, but the gentle sound of dishes being set and the smell of breakfast.

Now Will knows he's broken something in his mind, maybe permanently this time. He checked the fridge after he'd decided to stop working the night before, and found it wanting for - well - anything. That was when he'd snared the whiskey, although food's presence or lack thereof was never a barrier to that.

Will wonders, as he does every morning, if maybe it should be, dragging a hand along his brow and swallowing back a swell of nausea.

A hesitation, remembering another hand smoothing his hair back slowly, and he holds his breath until it hurts.

He times his breathing with the waves rushing soft against the sand, and on the fourth wave, he forces himself to sit up. Another quiet heave, stifled into stillness, and he stands unsteadily to approach the kitchen.

On the kitchen island rests a full glass of water, two pills beside it on a folded napkin. Will wonders where the napkins even came from - the last time he remembers using any was over Christmas, years and years ago. 

Regardless, there it is. But that’s not what interests him. Around the kitchen island, behind it, by the stove, stands a familiar back, familiar shoulders hunched very gently in the motion of preparation. When he turns, Hannibal looks just as he had when Will had opened the door to him, if a little more exhausted. 

“Good morning,” he offers, head tilting to look at Will properly, to gauge, perhaps, his ability to balance himself.

Will, in a similar moment of thought, braces a hand against the counter. He averts his eyes from Hannibal directly, watching him in his peripheral as he downs the two pills, and the glass of water.

The counter feels clean and Will draws his hand away from it.

Caution in his movements, and disbelief as he circles around to the other side of the island from Hannibal.

“What are you doing?” he asks with something cousin to wariness, taking note of the food in various states of completion.

Food that Will definitely did not spend his meager paycheck on, and on counters that he definitely did not spend his time cleaning. He draws a sharp breath and takes a careful seat on the stool beside the island, feet on the floor to stop it from moving quite so much beneath him. Hannibal considers him before returning to tend to what he has on the stove. It smells like spices, a softer scent beneath, perhaps eggs.

“The store you frequent was sadly out of artificial cereal,” Hannibal comments casually, turns whatever he’s working on and sends a hissing through the pan that makes Will’s stomach curl and turn in hunger simultaneously. “So I am making three egg omelette with sweet bell peppers, mushrooms and fresh dill.”

He bends to change adjust the heat and turns back to Will, a smile soft on his lips, voice low to account for Will’s obvious headache.

“I left the coffee to you.”

A smile appears, brief and genuine in this state before Will can start to close himself off again, and he runs a hand along his face. There's a quick tension when he does - startled by the scars that for a few moments, he forgot were there.

He doesn't tell Hannibal that he had taken to drinking instant coffee, and nods, sliding slow back off the stool.

Everything in the way Will watches Hannibal betrays his doubts, in Hannibal and moreso in himself, that Hannibal would still be there. Sidelong glances curious and quick, followed by drawing his lip between his teeth and worrying it while he pulls the last of the actual coffee out of the refrigerator.

"It stays fresher this way," Will explains, as though wary that speaking too loud would disrupt the moment, find him alone again and speaking to himself.

The soft susurrus of waves fills the space between them as Will tends to the coffee, nothing extraordinary in the way he does it, but it smells as strong and rich as it always has once it starts to brew. He eyes the remaining liquor bottles, now organized neatly on a shelf, and resists the urge.

Instead, Will leans against the counter, hands planted on it to steady himself, and watches Hannibal from nearer now, forcing himself not to draw away to the other side of the kitchen again. Will notes the wrinkles in his suit, slept in, and remembers pressing his face against the cool, soft fabric the night before.

His fingers tense against the counter as he feels the sudden overwhelming urge to do it again.

“You stayed.”

“I said I would,” Hannibal reminds him, but there is nothing in his tone but softness. For a moment longer, he doesn’t look at Will, careful to fold the omelette in the pan in a perfect half-moon, cooked brown around the edges and on the bottom. It smells delicious.

When he does look up, he’s smiling, a tired thing Will had never thought to see again. A smile that had only started appearing in the last few weeks before Jack had pushed reality so harshly against Will he was sliced with it.

Hannibal watches him until Will looks away again, and then he sighs, and directs his eyes away as well. He doesn’t know what to say without yanking hooks against Will’s skin.

He takes the coffee when Will offers it.

“I will continue to,” he adds eventually, looking at Will over the rim of the mug. He licks his lips with a pleased groan at the taste of the coffee. “Perhaps it’s time to stock up your kitchen with appropriate appliances.”

Will makes a small sound, amused, and hides his slight smile behind his mug.

“Not sure I’d know where to start,” Will admits, to no one’s surprise. “You -” a pause here, _and she_ unspoken, barely bitten back, “know better than I do.”

They would have liked each other, he considers, in another universe where nothing had gone the way it did. Both painfully clever, aware of the nuances of others and how to skillfully maneuver them, full of fascinations with curious things that strike their fancy. Her easy laugh would have found good company with his sense of humor, and their shared love of cooking - her practiced skill with comfort foods and his finesse - would have carried them both through long glasses of wine and Will would have watched and listened with wonder, and been pleased to think that two such extraordinary people would ever put up with him, and somehow - inexplicably - enjoy doing so.

Will clears his throat, and his thoughts.

“Besides,” he continues, returning from the distance, “if we’re leaving, shouldn’t we wait?” The pronoun feels heavy against his tongue, not uncomfortable but strange all the same - _we, us, ours_ \- and he watches Hannibal from over his mug.

“An excuse you will not be able to use again,” Hannibal replies, smiling wider before turning back to take the omelette from the stove and set it, somehow undamaged despite the obvious lack of proper tools, onto a plate that he passes to Will.

The lack of garnish, the lack of elegant and intricate presentation almost makes Will laugh. He wonders how hard it is for Hannibal to not decorate the plate, to keep it this simple. He wonders how long it’s been since he’s had the chance to, and it suddenly no longer seems funny.

He takes the fork Hannibal passes him and stares at his food, wondering if he should share it. His head throbs, his stomach is sending enough mixed signals to make him dizzy. Hannibal sips more coffee before setting it to the counter and passing Will to get something, a hand resting warm at the base of his back, as it had so often rested before. A gesture of comfort, intimacy, adoration.

Will draws a breath as warmth spreads up his spine, pours down goosebumps over his bare arms despite the early morning heat. He envies Hannibal his ability to compartmentalize, seemingly content to be here even in the barren kitchen and his wrinkled clothes and his tousled hair that pulls at Will and begs to be swept back out of his face.

As though years hadn’t passed. As though both had not suffered indescribably in their passing. As though it were all just another unfortunate series of dreams from which they’re both finally waking.

Will takes up the silverware to taste the omelette despite the agitation of his stomach, surprised by the lightness of it, nothing overwhelming or complicated, but simple and perfect.

“It’s great,” Will says, quiet relief when his stomach doesn’t revolt. “I don’t remember the last time I had,” he hesitates. Food? He has that sometimes. Breakfast? Rarely. Eggs? They always go bad before he remembers to try to use them. “Anything this good.” A pause. “I mean, it’s not artificially sweetened cereal, but…”

"And these are not 18th-century china bowls," Hannibal returns, just as calm and equally as amused. He still remembers watching in utter horror as Will had insisted on pouring that abominable excuse for food into one of Hannibal’s favoured presentation bowls and proceeding to consume it.

He remembers it becoming a habit.

He enjoys the rest of his coffee in quiet, as Will hides his smile picking away at breakfast. He knows he will not eat it all - he will finish it for him. Will’s thinness is a concern Hannibal knows he will address quickly. He also knows it is a concern Will would do his best to twist and argue against.

"Protein scramble," he says softly. “You need your strength."

A smile, faint. "You weren't wrong.” Watching Hannibal from across the counter, as they once sat across a cheap table in a dingy motel room. "I was, though," Will murmurs into his mug.

Starting over, in the same way they once began, to see if the snake is still holding its tail. 

"Do you want the rest?" Will asks, like clockwork, halfway through the omelette. "It's a lot. It's very good, though," Will assures him. He stands a little more steadily, to wind his way to the coffee and refill it.

To stand just a little closer to Hannibal, without that span between them.

"You should sleep,” Will adds. “There's a shower. I can find some clean sheets, maybe," he offers, gently. "Some clean clothes."

Hannibal watches Will with his head cocked, remembering this particular nervousness that manifests in movement and deliberate avoidance. This is not a worrying nervousness, this one suggests only that Will is adjusting, unfolding himself in the newness around him. He recalls the way Will had twitched and turned in his own house, pointing out things Hannibal could clearly see himself, bending to pet his dogs, shifting to the kitchen to move appliances that they never ended up using. Energy, motion, a lot of power that he suppresses behind a facade of shyness and appearing unapproachable.

“We can sleep in the evening,” Hannibal suggests, though he takes the plate Will offers without thinking twice, and takes up the same fork to eat with. “Though a shower would be very welcome.”

It’s jarring, beyond even the presence of Hannibal, here, now, finishing a half-eaten omelette in Will’s kitchen which would certainly be enough to qualify. But more strange is the movement in the house, the stirring of energy and sounds and smells that would normally be absent, when without him or anyone, Will would have rolled over and gone back to sleep until mid-afternoon.

Not entirely unpleasant, for the air to stir there again.

Hesitating, Will works his lower lip between his teeth, chewing for a moment before he speaks. “I was - I usually go swim, before it gets too hot. You could come.” Will leans against the counter, mug held tight in both hands, and just as quickly moves off it, brows furrowed. “I’d need to go find towels either way.” He walks from the kitchen, doesn’t hesitate again. “I’ll show you where the shower is.”

Hannibal turns to watch him depart, lips tilted in genuine amusement, but he does not follow him. He allows himself the languid enjoyment of the rest of the breakfast and coffee.

Outside, the weather is proving to be clear, no clouds, and warm air despite the earliness of the day. He can hear the ocean. He closes his eyes briefly, lets his mind sweep up the sound and filter it, adjust it to feel like the rushing of a brook, over heavy pebbles, Will’s first river, the one he had shared with him in winter, before the ice had fully taken over the place, and stopped it.

He lingers, feels the residual cold from the place, smells the pine, the dogs, Will beside him…

He doesn’t start but he does open his eyes abruptly when Will returns, and he nods with a smile as he finishes breakfast, as Will indicates where he’ll put the towel for him. Then he watches Will go, watches the way he rubs a hand over his face and tugs his shirt absently but doesn’t remove it.

He allows Will the time, the space to go where he usually does, and turns to wash the dishes, setting them carefully away where he had found them earlier that morning, and then follows Will outside.

Through the backyard, fenced in and spacious. The grass has not been tended to in some time, overgrown in some areas and dead in others. A few weathered dog toys lay among the grass, a few beach toys that never managed to get thrown away. A quiet desolation, and a reminder, perhaps, through which Will - and now Hannibal - makes himself pass to reach the water.

Beyond the yard, a sandy path well-trod through tall grasses that shift hissing in the strong salt wind, the heat and humidity already strong enough to draw a sheen of sweat. The path descends a shallow bank, and the beach spreads before him - bright white sand and clear water shimmering gold in the sun. Besides a few tall palms that rustle overhead, and the small dark pile where Will has dropped his shirt and a towel, the beach is empty.

A space, once shared, now Will’s alone.

Hannibal sees him, in the water, swimming against the tide. Powerful strokes as Will moves through the water, swimming past the breaking waves to the more calm sea where he settles, rests on his back and spreads his arms. Hannibal watches him rise and fall with the beginnings of waves, utterly safe and secure in the middle of nothing, no sound but the white noise of the sea, nothing but the water itself around him.

Hannibal doesn’t join him. He doesn’t invade this part of Will’s life, not until he’s invited.

As, he thinks, with everything now. He has tried the path of coercion and force, has tried manipulation and twisting things to his will and his way, and it has cost him. It has never paid off. So Hannibal settles, feet bare now that he has discarded his socks by the back door, and rests his elbows on his knees, watching the lone figure float in the swell.

He wonders if the water reminds Will of a heartbeat, if it reminds him to breathe.

Will lets the water carry him. Hears only the sound of the ocean. Feels only the waves bobbing slow against him and the sun warming hot against his skin, and tries to think of nothing, to let the movement and the stillness consume him, and for the first time in weeks - months - he does not succeed in finding that silence.

He thinks only of Hannibal now, a persistent presence for years in the back of his mind now appearing in the forefront. Seemingly wanting nothing but Will, but, Will considers, that's no different than what he's always wanted.

Controlling him through disease and disinformation.

Breaking him down through murders and manipulation.

Rebuilding him through adoration and affection, until Will didn't behave as Hannibal thought he should have.

Will _didn't_ behave as he should have, Will reminds himself, and runs a hand across his face. Too much guilt for this degree of sobriety, for this time in the day, to start retreading these well-worn paths. Not with Hannibal waiting expectant in his house. Waiting for Will. Waiting to leave.

With him.

Will takes an inventory of what's left to leave or to lose, and he laughs at how short the list really is. Besides material things, all so charged with the burden of memory that they can hardly be existed near, to leave his life here.

No great loss that would be. A life of no particular remaining value.

Just letting go. Slipping beneath the waters.

Will draws a breath, and arches to curve beneath the glassy surface, vanished for a length of time that starts to feel too long before he emerges, closer to the shore now. He stumbles a bit in the waves, catches himself as he walks out of the water, and sees Hannibal there. A hesitation, scarcely noticeable in his steps, before he continues on.

Will folds his arms over his middle and snares his shirt from the sand on the way past. He holds out his hand to Hannibal, and leaves in his palm the porcelain-thin test of a sea urchin, small and intricately patterned, long abandoned by the creature that once built it.

"There's a lot down there," he says, running a hand back through his hair to squeeze the water out of it.

Hannibal takes the delicate thing between his fingers and allows Will the privacy the little gift afforded. He thinks, for a moment, how something that in its life was so dangerous and powerful, poisonous and revered, would in death become something beautiful and harmless.

Out of the corner of his eye, Hannibal watches Will tug the shirt over his head, watches the fabric stick to the wet skin, Will’s stubborn determination to keep himself hidden even though Hannibal has already seen that, seen him. There’s a strange longing, for just a moment, for the time when vulnerability was just becoming the norm between them. When they had finally allowed the other in deep enough to see, to understand, to touch the delicate folds of their pain and their secrets and trust that they would not crush them.

“Have you ever tasted it?” he asks Will, turning to look at him now that he’s covered himself.

His attention ranges far over the water, hands on his narrowed hips. Scars cross pale over sun-browned arms. Defensive marks, where glass sharp as a knife cut through to bone.

"Once," Will responds. "Hawaii."

He clears his throat when something pulls at him. Buries it deep and glances down at Hannibal. Still in the same clothes he appeared in, although unbuttoned now in the heat, elegantly dishevelled. Will recalls through the booze-blurred memory of the night before that Hannibal didn’t come with any bags. He simply appeared, like a ghost - like smoke - and Will realizes that he must have gone out specifically to find a suit to wear before coming to find Will.

This too tugs at Will, the effort made to appear as Will once knew him, to replace the memory of seeing him with nothing more than a tired grey prison jumpsuit with something more familiar, instead.

Will reaches without looking and grazes his knuckles along Hannibal’s jaw, lets them linger there to draw slow over the scruff that has appeared, grateful to feel someone else’s pain supercede his own. Something he can change, maybe, rather than merely run himself ragged over.

“We should get some things,” Will says - that pronoun again, heavy on his tongue. “You need clothes. A toothbrush. Razor.” A tension, quickly suppressed, as he settles into the sand next to Hannibal, and folds his arms around his knees to hide the tremor he feels drawing through his limbs.

Hannibal turns to him to just watch, to take in his concern and wonder at what’s beneath it. The shiver that passes through Will is not from cold, but he says nothing on the matter, doesn’t reach out to touch Will, though he had turned his face against the gentle touch before.

“The basics I have managed,” he says. “Your little shop was very hospitable.” A smile, brief, genuine, and then Hannibal turns away to watch the waves again, straight-backed, if a little tousled, on the sand.

“Perhaps we will always remain as we are,” Hannibal says softly. “One of us suited, and the other far from it.” The rest remains unspoken: _It had once worked before, remaining unchanged with each other_.

Will makes an agreeable noise and turns his cheek against his knee, considering Hannibal with hooded eyes. He wonders at the resilience of him, to seem so at ease after so long alone - nothing to keep his attention, to feed his constant hunger for information, for stimulation of hyperactive senses.

For Will, isolation has been a restraint for a mind that won't stop wounding itself. For Hannibal, it must have been a purgatory.

"You have what you need," Will offers, pensive. "But there must be things that you _want_."

Hannibal’s lips curl upwards but it’s a gentle gesture.

“Many,” he agrees, before turning to Will and pushing himself to stand, “and not only things.” After a moment he holds his hand out for Will to take, if he wants it. “Perhaps I will acquire yet another collection of suits,” he says, amused, “as you will acquire records.”

Will feels the response like a door closing - not slamming, but shutting. Almost polite.

He doesn't try to open it again.

Working his lips between his teeth, Will takes Hannibal’s hand gently, then firmly, silently cursing the tremors he feels resonating from deep inside his chest, fighting not to let it enter his limbs and knowing Hannibal can feel all of it, every twitch, as he pulls himself to stand. He leaves that door closed, too. Reminds himself to breathe. Focuses on how their hands fit together, the way Hannibal's fingers feel laced between his own.

Reminds himself to breathe.

"How will this work?" Will asks, stumbling softly into broken French. "I don’t have much." Much money. Much to bring. Much to offer, as a whole.

“The less we have the easier it is to start,” Hannibal points out, stroking his thumb gently over Will’s knuckles before relaxing his grip, permission to let go if the closeness is still stifling for Will. He doesn’t mention the shaking in his hands. “The islands are only watched for holiday goers, and of those there are many. Once we are on it, no one will attempt to look. They are too many.”

He wonders if Will knows how long this has been planned, how many years spent lying quiet and still, deep in the memories of his mind, in his office or his bedroom, in Wolf Trap with Will, discussing this with soft words and softer smiles.

“There is money enough for people willing to help,” he adds, “and boats are not as well monitored as planes, in places such as this.”

The surety of Hannibal’s words seems to ease away a degree of the doubt still lingering the darkness of Will’s eyes. He lets his hand press against Hannibal’s for a moment more, studying the way they fit together, and releases it gently as he starts towards the house again.

Offshore accounts are a granted, Will considers, mind working quickly to fill in the blanks. His own money from his practice, but that doesn’t account for all of it - he never took more from patients than he desired, or more than suited his own curiosities about working his way into the minds of others. Inheritance, perhaps, but that raises more questions.

Will clears his throat, to try to override the anxiety clattering sharp in his head.

“You’ve done this before.”

“One learns to take precautions,” Hannibal replies carefully, but he squeezes Will’s fingers in reassurance for just a moment.

He has spent time running before. In his youth, before he had been smart, before he had been quick and taught and practiced. But the habits have stayed since then, to hold at least three accounts, to use the money his uncle had left him, his estate, in a way that can’t be linked back to either of them. He knows the family that lives there now, lovely people. They know nothing of what Hannibal is capable of.

“I had once run,” he admits. “I had hoped never to again. Perhaps you will break me of more than one bad habit in my life, Will.”

Will files the information away, alongside the other bits and pieces that he's accumulated in building Hannibal's history. An incomplete collection that he feels a brief pleasure to add to again.

"I don't think even I could break you of those suits," Will responds dryly, an almost-smile just catching in the corners of his eyes as he holds the door open. Will draws a breath as Hannibal passes by him into the house, their eyes meeting in a brief amusement, and Will snares his hand again. He holds it there, fingers tensing against the gentle tremors that have not yet abated, and he ducks his head as he pulls Hannibal towards him.

An aching need to feel him close, as a comfort rather than as a threat.

"You're not going to find me very interesting anymore," Will sighs, almost a laugh, tinged with bitterness beneath his breath.

Hannibal steps close enough to feel Will warm against him, their hands still joined in that desperate cling Will needs to ground himself. The words are aimed down, towards his feet, towards the scar that sits under the thin shirt - where it’s damp enough, Hannibal can see the outline of it as the fabric sticks to skin.

The withdrawals have taken Will quickly, and Hannibal feels the familiar pang of worry. Seeing Will so thin, so exhausted, so _consumed_. He draws a hand up Will’s front, warm against the cooling shirt, and rests the sides of his fingers gently under his chin to lift it, holds him that way, just gently vulnerable, until Will blinks and lifts his eyes as well.

“You have kept my interest, Will, for more years than I can fathom,” he tells him honestly, softly. His eyes flick down to Will’s lips, parted in surprise before they press together. “I cannot find you uninteresting.” _Everything you are, is interesting._

Will's eyes dart to Hannibal's mouth. He swallows hard.

A faint smile, mirthless. "You will," he assures him, lifting a shaking hand to trail along Hannibal's cheek, his jaw, resting there. "A memory. No negotiation of time. Just... stopped." There's a gentleness to his words, not unkind despite the certainty in them.

Will draws his lower lip into his mouth, tastes the salt there, but he doesn't draw away despite his soft-spoken admonitions. His heart hammers fast in his chest, a muddled rush of fear and longing, aching thick and heavy and warm in every part of him, despite the ice he feels still gouging deep through his stomach.

"I'll go with you," Will murmurs, a little closer, enough to feel the heat of Hannibal's mouth near his own, shaking harder the nearer they draw. "I'll go this time."

Hannibal hums, just a gentle thing, and keeps his eyes on Will. He watches the way he swallows, the way he keeps his words, short, quiet, anger and hatred directed inwards, now, not projected. He feels it acutely regardless, wonders if this is how Will suffers with empathy.

"We will go," he corrects, back to French for a moment, ducking his head further to rub their noses together in a gentle nuzzle. "We will."

He allows Will to kiss him, closes his eyes and parts his lips to it, feels his heart beat thick in his ears as Will’s hammers faster against his chest.

_And not only things._

Will shivers as their mouths meet, leans into it despite and lets his eyes close. He draws Hannibal's arm around him before pulling loose of his fingers and placing his other hand against Hannibal's face, framing it, thumbs stroking across his cheeks.

A thousand words flood through Will and he finds none that he's strong enough to say right now. Reality is too sharp like this, Hannibal's mouth too warm and too gentle and Will can do nothing more than to try to absorb it, to force himself to feel that patience holding him standing despite his own weakness. Much taken, little offered. Nothing now to take, and only himself to offer.

A quiet sound, from deep in Will's chest as he presses firmly into Hannibal, and lets his hands slip to loop his arms around Hannibal’s neck instead. Hannibal keeps his breathing steady, slow, eyes closed and hands gentle at Will’s sides as the younger man presses closer.

It’s the best kind of familiar; the warm nights and the worn leather couch and the fire before it. The early weekend mornings at Wolf Trap, where Will had pressed a smile to Hannibal’s lips, then to his neck and chest and lower. This is winter evenings on Wednesday at 7:30, when conversation no longer mattered and there was nothing between them but air.

And yet, all at once, this is none of those things.

Desperation and anguish, self-hatred and too much whiskey.

Hannibal moans, a soft, aching sound, and breaks the kiss to press his forehead to Will’s and swallow down the need for this, the desperate desire for it.

"Go shower," Will breathes between their mouths, afforded that moment to steady himself against the waves that start to crash harder on his shores. He strokes gently along Hannibal's cheek again, a fearful fondness in the touch, before he nuzzles him away. Creating space between them. Safety.

And cold, sharp and sudden, drawing pinpricks over his skin.

"I have to work," he says, an obvious excuse that he knows Hannibal won't argue against. "There's a motor. Side of the house. I have to finish it before," a hesitation, and a crooked smile as he shifts into French, to mirror Hannibal's words, "before we go."

When there’s more space between them, more chills sharp down Will’s spine at the profound and familiar emptiness that sinks into his bones, he rubs a hand over his face. “There’s some clothes. Bedroom beside the bathroom. Something might fit. Probably not as nice.”

Hannibal’s teeth press together and he says nothing. He wonders if Will really thinks he’s being subtle, he wonders how much more is broken within him than what he can see and feel.

The lie sits heavy between them and he allows it there.

He blinks, directs his eyes away before nodding, the smile he sends Will is soft and careful. “I appreciate the sentiment regardless,” he says, takes another step back and turns for the stairs.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _The house feels stagnant. Not uncomfortable, and not unclean, but somehow incomplete. Will's things are there in increments, well-read books - some that Hannibal remembers from Wolf Trap - piled beside conspicuous empty spaces on shelves. A bedroom rarely slept in, with blinds that haven't been moved recently enough to shake the dust from them._

The shower is good, the pressure strong and constant and the water hot. Despite the heat outside, it helps relax the muscles held bunched and pained in his shoulders and back, up through his neck. Hannibal takes his time there, head tilted to the water as it had once tilted to the snow, when he was little, to the rain when Will had left him with the offer, the promise, that they could leave.

Now.

Together.

So long ago now, almost not worth the memory or energy, but he remembers.

He draws a hand, cooler than the water, over his face, and turns the water off then down before stepping out. He manages to find a shirt, one he imagines has always been big on Will, that sits comfortably over his shoulders. He puts on the suit pants again, and makes his way downstairs barefoot.

The house feels stagnant. Not uncomfortable, and not unclean, but somehow incomplete. Will's things are there in increments, well-read books - some that Hannibal remembers from Wolf Trap - piled beside conspicuous empty spaces on shelves. A bedroom rarely slept in, with blinds that haven't been moved recently enough to shake the dust from them. A smaller room not far from it, painted in bright colors, now empty.

Stairs, where the newspapers described the attack in lurid detail.

Will, to his credit, is working exactly where he said he would be. Oil-stained and sweaty, hunched low over an engine with his lips pressed tight in concentration. His hands are steady now, with a stability in his attention that wasn't there before.

He nods, towards a dusty little radio set nearby in the grass. "I found that. Mol-" A sharp pause, shuttered harshly before his tone steadies again. "Used to use it down on the beach. If you wanted music."

His attention lingers a moment more, on the fall of the shirt against Hannibal's shoulders - still broad, unexpectedly strong - and down the length of him, to the way his feet sink against the soft grass, and then away again. Will wipes his hand on a rag before taking up the glass beside him - iced tea, or something like it - to ease the tension he feels pushing hot across his ribs.

Hannibal thinks, vaguely, of the mornings Will would hum whatever aria he could remember, standing in Hannibal’s kitchen, one foot on the other to keep off the cold floor as he brewed coffee, sometimes in the sleep pants hanging low on his hips, sometimes in nothing at all.

“Music would be welcome with company,” Hannibal says, considers the Will before him now, considers how the smell of tea is barely present, like a scent from a bottle sprayed in the air. It’s a similar color, he supposes, well enough to hide.

“Will you help me with dinner this evening?” he asks, drawing Will’s attention enough to keep him present, not enough to distract him from his work. He settles carefully on the edge of the porch and watches Will work.

"I can try." A flicker of a smile, before his brows furrow and he twists something in the engine, straining against the wrench. Distracted, briefly, with a bright curiosity as he studies the machinery, working through it - sifting chaos back into order. Pleased with whatever conclusion the quick movements of his mind reached, he glances up at Hannibal again. "What will it be?"

An invitation to an old routine. Will sitting in the kitchen observing Hannibal as he worked, sipping coffee and carefully out of the way. Later, Will joining him, to listen attentively as Hannibal spoke with passion about what they were doing, gentle instructions to guide the uncertain movements of Will's hands, and later, when he relinquished that control to Will, and the dishes were no longer strictly vegetarian.

And always with the soft tones - words warmly curled over his accent - of one happy to have someone to genuinely share not necessarily in the object of their interest, but in their interest itself.

"Perhaps pilaf," Hannibal offers with a smile. “Aromatic and uncomplicated. A dish we have not shared before." He watches Will twist something else in the engine and parts his lips with his tongue. "Filling," he continues, "long-simmering and well worth the wait."

For a moment his eyes narrow in a near cousin to mischief.

"It is a dish that demands very little attention as it cooks. Independent. Both social and solitary.”

Will’s brows lift a little. Another glance upward from the motor, lingering with a warm disbelief that Hannibal is still sitting there, unexpectant and patient, saying these things, as Will works. That Hannibal is there at all, really, or that Will is still there, or that there’s somehow yet a quiet comfort in their words after so long and so much.

“Sounds promising,” Will yields, faint amusement. He squints, expression twisting as he turns something inside the engine. “To let the particular flavor develop on its own time.” A pause, his focus seemingly invested in his work, even as he speaks with an entirely intentional mildness. “To be enjoyed that much more for the restraint that waiting requires.”

This. Will has missed this desperately.

The corners of Hannibal’s eyes bunch in amusement, though his expression remains otherwise unchanged. “Everything worth enjoying is worth the patience to get it,” he agrees. His own patience with his cooking, with waiting for Will to come to him on his own, initially. Patience of seven years behind bars between four unyielding walls. Corner to corner, cement to cement.

“A composition takes time to evolve, from notes scribbled on a page to a practiced melody,” he continues, “Conversation takes time to develop from single words and pauses to sentences and breaths.” He watches Will carefully, presses his lips together in a self-calming gesture, sighs softly. His hands are clasped in front of him, between his knees, fingers loosely locked and barely moving.

“Touch develops similarly,” Hannibal adds gently. “From accidental contact to familiar gestures.”

There’s a flush of color across Will’s cheeks as tension spreads slow across his stomach. Not the residual agony of the knife and the parts that it took with it, but a softer feeling. Arms wrapping around his middle as he stands in the kitchen. As he leans against the counter and brushes his teeth. In his old office at Quantico, with a foot pressed against the door to keep it closed.

"Routines begin somewhere." Will’s shoulders shift, attention turning briefly skyward as he attaches the belt drive. "I have a tendency to leave things unattended," Will continues, muted tones. "Left to its own devices, there can be too much infused into it, for too long. It becomes bitter." A pause, guilt snaring his words.

He takes up his drink again and steps back as though to study the engine, attention unfocused.

"I'm not sure how to correct that. If it can be corrected."

Hannibal watches him, eyes soft at the words, for a moment out of focus as well.

"Sometimes the only way to rescue it is restart," he responds. “Adjust what you add. Try to stay attentive." _As it develops, infuses, creates entirely new things with what was initially added._ "Cooking is organic, controlled. But not so much as to stifle the process itself." He keeps his eyes on the glass Will drinks from before pushing himself to stand.

"A balance, Will," he reminds him, "hobby and art. You cannot allow one to overpower the other.".

Will hums a note of acknowledgement, considers the words as he finishes his drink.

“Adding new components,” Will considers, “to even out the ones that already exist.”

He circles the engine, back towards the house, and his fingers brush soft against Hannibal’s hand as he passes.

Accidental contact.

It continues, once Will has showered and he finds himself with Hannibal in the kitchen again, and finds another glass of brown drink in his hand, no more tea in it than there is water from the melting ice. Their hands pass against each other as they reach for ingredients, a brief touch here and there as Will stands a little closer than necessary. Refamiliarizing themselves with this nearness, recontextualizing the presence of the other as the rhythm starts to find a familiar cadence. He compliments the food, as always, and means it, as always. A quiet suggestion, fingers trailing soft against Hannibal’s hip, for Hannibal to bring in the radio and find a station for them, while Will does the dishes.

The radio tunes slowly, as Hannibal seeks for something other than the sounds scraping cruel against his ears that, with a laugh, Will assures him is modern music. He settles at last on a station playing soft jazz, and comes to stand by Will to dry the dishes carefully. 

Will’s head tilts a little at the music, unable to completely suppress a smile. He watches Hannibal sidelong and feels a swell of pleasure, so intense that it forces him to take a deeper breath, at the thought of Hannibal - so long isolated from the things that move him - hearing music again. This music, in particular, bass and trumpet and piano twining against each other in warm composition. An arrangement of equal parts order and improvisation, the way they themselves once were when they would lay together and hear the same song play crackling from the record player.

The way they could still be, Will considers.

Hannibal sets the dishes away precisely, deliberately, forces himself to ignore Will getting in his way, ignore the brushes of fingers against his sides, his stomach, up against the hollow of his throat. Until finally the last is set away and Hannibal cups Will's face and kisses him.

Will inhales sharply as their mouths meet, eyes falling closed. He breathes Hannibal’s name against his lips when they part and then just as quickly drives them together again, curling his arms tight around Hannibal’s neck. A _need_ , coiling fierce and pushing a low moan from Will. To feel Hannibal near him. To let himself be felt. To watch Hannibal’s senses stir to life again beneath his hands and mouth.

No longer a fearful, nervous thing of startled kisses and unsure hands, this is a hunger, and Will pushes Hannibal back against the counter, gasping soft before plunging into another kiss. He pushes his fingers along Hannibal’s neck, up into the back of his hair, and tugs just gently to meet his eyes.

Will tastes of whiskey and spices, and Hannibal catches his gaze just long enough to make him understand that either this stops now or it won’t until its inevitable conclusion. He finds no reluctance in Will, no hesitation, and allows his hands to gently shift to curl in Will’s hair as well, a mirror, a soft reciprocation, before tightening his hold and tilting Will’s head back to press his teeth just under his jaw.

He tastes as the very basest of Hannibal’s senses remember, and yet so many parts are missing in the mix that it’s almost like discovering him anew again. He smells of oil and sweat, of cheap shampoo and early mornings. He no longer smells of dogs and pine, and winter. Hannibal presses closer until he feels Will struggle, not in any genuine way but just enough to twist something primal in him, something hungry and animalistic and unstoppable.

“Where?” he growls, voice low and quiet, pulled back just far enough to keep his lips off skin but not enough to pull away.

Will breathes a laugh across Hannibal’s ear, arms still wrapped tight around his neck. Urgent, eager, he considers just turning them both around, bending himself over the counter and letting Hannibal take him, rough with need until Will’s knees give out from under him.

His cheeks flush hot at the thought but it’s not how he wants it, beyond the simple _want_ of it. No, he wants Hannibal to watch him, to _see_ him, after so long.

“Living room,” Will murmurs, teeth catching Hannibal’s ear, and then he draws away, achingly slow, enough that Hannibal can feel the air between them before a quick smile catches in his eyes. To let himself be pursued. To let himself be caught. Claimed. And to experience the shiver that draws up his spine and gathers tingling beneath his hair when he sees Hannibal’s eyes narrow on him.

There’s a pause, perhaps a breath long, before Will bolts, a quick motion to simply get himself out of the kitchen and around the counter. He doesn’t have far to run, and he isn’t running through an elaborate labyrinth of a house here, not to get away, to see how far he could get to live.

No.

Here Will makes it three steps before a hand snares his shoulder, catches his wrist when Will manages to twist away. There is a brief moment of freefall when he stumbles, hand out to catch himself against the floor when Hannibal grabs him instead, just fast enough to avoid pain, before they both drop heavy to the worn rug and Will tries his luck to wriggle away here as well.

It’s intoxicating, sends Hannibal’s blood humming with need and want and _now_ , and when he finally manages to turn Will to him, to catch his hands in his futile struggle and pin them, he kisses him breathless, feeling Will smile as wide as he is against it.

There is a moment, however brief, when Will's breath stops. Pinned against the floor, against the rug beneath which his own blood still stains the floorboards. His scars sing to him, nerves sparking sharp, but he swallows the feeling down like so much whiskey to lose his breath in the heat of Hannibal's kiss instead, to lose himself beneath the still-familiar weight pressed possessive and protective over him.

Will sighs his name again, an eager moan curling his voice as he languidly arches himself against Hannibal, hips pressing and spine curving until he's nearly bridged beneath him.

"Please," Will whispers, flushed bright beneath his beard, beneath the scars, lips parted breathless. He squirms again, another fierce twist of his body, wrists held together, every bit the willing prey to Hannibal's predator.

Hannibal’s lips part to tell him to wait, to have _patience_ and to _take time_ but he ends up doing little more than biting harsh kisses against Will’s neck, down lower to the collar of his shirt before he leaves just one hand to hold Will pinned and brings his other down to tug at the buttons holding the fabric closed over him. Just enough for him to duck his head and feel a nipple peak beneath his tongue. He moves from one to the other, when he feels Will’s body tremble with holding still, with the sensations pouring over him again, after so long.

He doesn’t let him go.

He drops his hand to work the button on Will’s pants, to draw the fly down. He ignores how sharp Will’s hipbones are, he ignores how thin he feels compared to the warm memories of him Hannibal has stored away. It doesn’t matter. Not here. He has him here, now, _his_ , and the rest can be fixed with time.

He jerks Will with rough strokes, enough to feel him harden in his grip, groan and arch and spread his knees for more as Hannibal watches. Slowly he smiles, meeting Will’s eyes until the other’s widen, in expectation, hope, a shaky anticipation.

“Stay still,” he warns, familiar, amusement warming his words. Then he lets Will go, draws both hands down his sides before hitching Will’s hips higher, the fabric of his pants and boxers pushed lower as he leans in to draw his tongue hot and rough against Will’s hole.

Another stab of fear cuts cold through Will at those words, spoken here, now, rather than as Will heard them once echoing in his own head while blood pooled hot around him. A shudder that quickly turns into a spasm of pleasure, fingers snaring hard in Hannibal’s hair as a moan rips itself from deep inside him.

“No,” Will responds through clenched teeth, grinning flushed as he rocks his hips against every press of Hannibal’s tongue, seeking more of this, of Hannibal, _his_ , to replace the memories with new ones instead.

He pushes his pants off with his feet, thighs twitching tight against Hannibal’s face when he slides his legs up over his shoulders. Curling his spine to bring his hips higher, to open himself more and be laid bare before him. Mindless of the scar that undulates across his stomach with every heaving breath staggering past his lips, mindless of anything but seeing Hannibal wrapped between his legs and the way his tongue presses inside of him and makes his head swim.

Hannibal looses a hand from Will’s thigh to run across his stomach instead and this draws a plaintive sound from Will, aching deep at the feel of it, his hands different than before - rougher, thinner - and yet so much the same that the sound turns softer, a gentle surprise in his eyes when he hears it fall from his own lips.

“Yours.”

_Mine._

A possessive breathless mantra licked against Will’s skin, pressed into him to remind him to never forget it again. Hannibal bows to the hands in his hair, to the tremors that run harsher through Will’s body, attentive to the panting breaths, to the low sounds of need. He doesn’t move beyond bringing a hand down to press his fingers into the trembling hole, stretching him further, feeling Will relax into it, push down against his hand.

_Will you miss me?_

Will’s breath hitches, brought to stillness in a gasp that twists up the length of his body, before releasing all at once in a tight whimper. As many years for Will as for Hannibal since he was touched like this, pulse rushing hot in his ears. The shadows drive themself from the darkened corners, the years fall away in an instant and Will rolls his hips, twisting in slow circles against Hannibal’s fingers. Will comes alive beneath his touch, quiet little moans catching every breath, back curving up off the floor in eager undulations.

“More,” Will insists, breathless and demanding as his eyes open heavy-lidded, just enough to catch Hannibal’s dark gaze across his skin. “You. Please,” he sighs, tugging against Hannibal’s hair to draw him up over him. “Please, Hannibal.”

_You own me._

Hannibal unfolds over Will’s body, deliberately draws dry lips over his sides, up his chest, to his neck and sighs against him there. His hand moves languid, from preparing Will to undoing his own pants, enough to pull himself free and stroke, gasping his own pleasure against Will’s damp skin.

When he presses in it’s slow, a deliberate motion and one single thrust, but enough to let Will settle, to remind him of the stretch, the push, the feeling of it. He pulls back to watch, see how Will’s eyes roll back, his mouth falls slack on swallows that click in his throat.

“Beautiful,” he murmurs, unsure if it’s French or English or another language entirely. He pauses, just briefly, when he’s fully seated, ducks his head to draw his nose against Will’s to share breath but not yet kiss him. Then, just as suddenly, he sets his hands on either side of Will’s shoulders and starts a quick, brutal rhythm.

Claiming.

Owning.

Possessing.

Will can't catch his breath, quickened to little noises pushed past his parted lips every time Hannibal drives into him. He watches, wide-eyed and open, as Hannibal's expression seems to harden and soften all at once, a ravenous need balanced out by an adoration too substantial for words. He curves beneath him, gentle waves from his shoulders down through his hips, and slides a leg up over Hannibal's hip, against the trousers still clinging to them, shivering at the sensation of the fabric against his bare skin.

"It hurts."

The honeyed words drip from Will's lips like wine, sweetly devious, and he arches in delight, grinning, at the low, feral sound it earns him. His fingers find Hannibal's mouth to feel that sound again, to press against his lips, his teeth, over his tongue. A sharper arch now in Will's body, shoving himself hard against Hannibal, fingers still in his mouth, to roll the older man onto his back. He swears beneath his breath and rocks back against Hannibal's length still buried agonizing, delightful inside him and lifts his chin as he studies Hannibal beneath him.

Smiling, coy, his own hips dictate the slow driving rhythm of their bodies. “Mine,” Will whispers, and he lets his fingers trail slow from Hannibal’s mouth to wrap soft around his throat instead.

Hannibal lets him. Watches from beneath heavy lids, lips tilting in a smirk before he arches his back and offers Will his throat properly. It’s electric, unfamiliar, but somehow right in this. What should be there between them, now.

Will moves languid, in contrast to how Hannibal had him pinned and it’s exquisite torture having to hold back, but he does. He rests his hands against Will’s hips and feels them move, shift against him as he tenses his muscles to rise, relaxes them to drop back down. His skin has grown warmer, flushed, shirt still unbuttoned and hanging loose off one shoulder. He looks younger, as he was.

“I am,” Hannibal agrees.

Will bends, a pleased hum at this. At Hannibal, here, underneath him with his back against the floor, pulse quickened beneath Will's thin fingers.

They tighten.

"You are."

As though for emphasis, he rocks forward as slowly as he can stand, and presses himself back just as languidly, until Hannibal is buried inside him again. Will curves forward over Hannibal, and whispers against his ear.

"You _will_ be."

A question. A demand.

"Yes," Hannibal replies, nearly a growl, and it's enough.

Will relaxes his grip against Hannibal's throat to fist his fingers in his hair instead. He kisses open-mouthed and hungry against his neck, his bared throat and leans back to drag Hannibal upward with him by his hair until they're sitting. A frantic pace now between them as Will slides his legs around Hannibal's hips, wrapped around him and gasping jagged moans against his skin. Consuming what is theirs alone. What has always only ever really belonged to them.

As they once were.

Wolves.

Nails draw harsh over Will’s skin, down from his shoulders to press against his spine before fingers splay and curl over his shoulders again, pushing him down against every thrust, forcing him to take the pace, the roughness of this, to remember it. There is nothing between them now but air, hot and filled with soft sounds. Lips barely touch in anything that could be called a proper kiss. They are heat and motion and one heartbeat. The sum of a whole.

Hannibal extricates one hand to slide it between them and grip Will tight, twisting and pulling against him just out of time with the thrusts to have him arch back, lips wide and eyes closed. He leans in to press his teeth to the center of Will’s chest, harsh for a moment, and groans as Will clenches hard around him, so close.

Every word that begs to be spoken - _yours, mine, please, yes_ \- becomes a whimper, rising high on each breath cut short by Hannibal's rough thrusts. Will arches against Hannibal's hand, bent back pliant beneath his mouth to let Hannibal's need fill him again and again until finally, breathless, Will cries out and his body jerks sharply.

Lost, as relief pulls itself from him, hot against Hannibal’s hand. Will’s legs tremble and clench tight around Hannibal and he grasps in spasms against his shoulders until finally, he sinks into Hannibal with a low groan, hips still rocking beyond his control as Hannibal continues to drive into him, to draw the moment out for as long as he can stand. And then he, too, follows Will to quiet. Limbs heavy and body thrumming with energy, heart beating faster than he ever allows just to match Will’s for pace, to feel that connection until they start to slow together.

They sit, sated, sticky, and Hannibal has to laugh at the absurdity of it, the strange normalcy that can only make sense with them, to them. He pulls back, enough to see Will properly, and curls his fingers under his chin again before leaning in to kiss one of the scars across his cheek, his other hand holding Will firm against his hip until his lips have traced it, worshipped it. Apologized and brought even this, what Will hates most, to the level of idolatry.

He nuzzles softly against Will’s cheek, feels his breath stutter from him, and then leans closer, slides his palm up to support Will’s back as he lays him down against the floor, pulls out and settles over him. Will turns against Hannibal, presses closer to him and turns his face away from the warm breath and warmer lips that graze across his skin. Something swells dark in him, as his breath settles and his body relaxes spent, that pulls his spine tight again, draws his fingers curling into Hannibal's shirt.

"Stop," Will hisses, sharp, as Hannibal's mouth moves over his scars. A fierce discomfort, fighting down the flight response that tastes metallic on his tongue. Darkness in his eyes, shining scarlet, and spreading fast across his face, pooling hot beneath him. The feeling of his face no longer his own when his fingers lifted shaking to it and found only strips of raw flesh. The sinking cold that pulled at him as it had in Baltimore, tendrils grasping icy around his limbs and weighing them down until he sank into the black waters.

Curled on the floor, as now, but with a different voice beside him.

"Breathe, Will."

He shudders sharply, uncertain whose voice he wants to hear more, his or hers, and which one just drives the knife deeper. Pushing away from Hannibal now, from the floor, and dragging an arm equally scarred across his eyes.

“Stop.” To himself. To Hannibal. To his own thoughts thick with blood.

Hannibal follows, presses one hand against Will’s shoulder to keep him from rising further. The other rests against the ground beside him, framing but not caging him in place. “Let me,” he sighs, drawing his lips over the scars on Will’s arms as well, tracing them, learning them and committing them to memory.

_You did this_ , he reminds himself, _this is your work_.

He feels Will shudder again, beneath him, not move but tense until his entire form is trembling with the effort, until his breathing comes harsh and erratic. Hannibal considers that he has never seen Will so afraid. Even when he had asked Hannibal to hunt him, when he had had no escape there, he had not been so scared. He had clung, he had murmured and sought comfort but he had not closed off like this. He thinks of how utterly unafraid Will had been in his arms when he had plunged the knife into his stomach. How utterly at peace he was, happy to go, to pay for his error and make it go away.

It takes effort for Hannibal to pry Will’s arm away from his face and set it to the carpet. He doesn’t even try to catch Will’s eyes here, he knows he won’t look at him, but he can see them bright, wet in the last light of the evening. He can see Will’s jaw working in anger, and pain and something far more vulnerable, and he reaches to undo the rest of the buttons holding Will’s shirt on him and finds his wrist gripped harsh and tight by Will’s free hand.

“Stop,” he says again, but his voice is just above a whisper, harsh and weak and his expression is one of absolute anguish. And Hannibal realizes, in that moment, what Will fears. That the scars make him monstrous, that they make him something to be hated and feared, not adored the way Hannibal adores him.

“Will,” he says, soft, and sees Will’s eyes flick to him quickly, his throat working in a swallow.

Slowly, Hannibal lowers himself to press his lips to his chest, intent clear.

A black hatred wells up in Will so suddenly he chokes on it. The river flooding the shores against his feet, dark waters bubbling up from the floorboards, flashing mirror bright to swallow him. Hatred for his weakness now and in all things, in an entire life that amounts to nothing and should have ended countless times before now.

Bearing through the woods in Wolf Trap towards the river, with his pack bounding alongside as company.

Sprawled loose-limbed across the couch in Baltimore, as Hannibal rises grudgingly from sleeping atop him to change the record over.

Gentle Molly bright and warm on the beach beside him, while Willy and the dogs play in the surf.

Gone. Gone. Gone.

Will shudders convulsively as Hannibal presses another kiss, lower still, against his skin. He catches Hannibal's face in his hands to stop his progress, and breathing much too hard, much too quickly, reminds himself that this, too, was a failure. For all he felt, for all that consumed him with ardor and affection and fascination, he made a choice based in his own self-touted morals. A betrayal, and unfathomable years lost to steel bars and cement walls and isolation.

A failure to himself. To his family. To Hannibal, whose suffering tastes just as ashen as his own.

"I should have come to you," Will breathes, turning away to hide the pain that glistens in his eyes, his words so soft the words are hardly formed on the tremors of his breath. "I should have come to you. And then - none of this - none of it."

Hannibal turns his head to kiss the palm against him, a soft lingering thing, as Will stumbles over the words, as his breathing hitches harder.

_Be still_ , he soothes with soft breath, _I forgive you, be still_.

Will trembles, draws one hand back to press to his lips, between them, between his teeth. Biting harsh at the soft skin between thumb and forefinger as Hannibal ducks his head to breathe against his stomach. Against the scar he had felt open beneath his own hands. It's still pale despite his tan, smooth with scar tissue and raised. He wonders if it still hurts, if he had damaged beyond the visible, if it pains Will to turn or bend or stretch up.

Carefully, he leans closer to press his lips, soft, to the corner of it. Worshiping.

Will goes still. Stops twisting away, stops squirming. All but stops breathing.

A stark silence settles in but for the distant sound of the ocean, and for the words that come in waves.

"I would have left everything for you.”

Waves, dark against the sand.

“I should have come to you. Before. After. I should have come."

Guilt, cloying and heavy against his tongue, his anguish no longer wracking his exhausted body but simply washing soft over the shores.

"We were supposed to go together."

Hannibal continues the soothing of his lips over the scar, eyes closed as he breathes Will in, as he draws softness against the place he had once aimed to tear Will in half. He presses his own apologies against him.

_I should have trusted you._

A kiss, warm, barely wet, just in the middle.

_I should have waited._

A sigh to cool the skin.

_I should have listened._

When he’s finished, he draws his nose softly up Will’s middle, just to have the contact, to have him feel the touch. When he kisses Will now, it’s just under his eyes, to taste the salt there, the agony and shame. He kisses it away, kisses him clean.

“We can now,” he reminds him, strokes damp hair from his face.

Will can't argue with him. Not because he doesn't doubt every word of it, doubts that it will ever work, that Will's even worth taking or that Hannibal won't soon realize he's not. He can't because there's no strength left to voice it, and then still have to shutter his windows and doors when Hannibal speaks at him with that same confidence he did when they promised each other rivers and summers and lifetimes together.

He draws close against the warmth despite it all. Pulls his arm around Hannibal's neck and tucks his head against his shoulder. Takes in the taste of his skin beneath his mouth and the warmth of him and the calm of his heart. His other fingers curl against the scar curving long across his stomach, gently seeking stitches, to rend and to pull and to release.

"I want to go."

“Next week,” Hannibal tells him, catching his hand to gently kiss the inside of his wrist, before pulling away to sit up. “Come to bed, Will,” he asks, eyes soft, shoulders sagged in exhaustion and relief. He looks older, for a moment. “I changed the sheets. You will not get rest on the couch.”

Will seems ready to remain on the floor, but he’s tugged gently away from it by Hannibal’s hand and he follows. A hesitation, brief resistance in Will’s eyes before it fades into a deep exhaustion.

He doesn’t release his hand, until they’re curled close together again and he settles into uneasy sleep.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“I will deal with the consequences of my rudeness if it ultimately leads to your health, Will,” Hannibal says, sets his cutlery down and threads his fingers together to set the heels of his hands against the cool table. “You would not stop,” he tells him gently, “by willpower or request. So I took away a factor you couldn’t control.” ___

There are conspicuous absences, and conspicuous presences.

Hannibal is a conspicuous presence, in this place where he should not belong but does. The quaint quirked smile as Will appears in the kitchen, peaceable and charming. The aspirin and water left out on the counter. Something sizzling sweet in an old pan.

And as Will swallows the pills and accepts with a ruddy flush the kiss that Hannibal presses fondly against his cheek, he takes note of the conspicuous absence of liquor bottles, the counter empty where they stood only the night before.

Will does not mention this, or the anxiety that digs deeper the unsettled pit of his stomach. Hannibal’s been adjusting the unused kitchen to his liking enough that Will is content to assume they’re simply stashed away in a cabinet.

He does not mention it when he’s done swimming and feels the tremors start like echoes in his chest, softly at first - a fluttering sensation - and then resonating outwards, until he sees his hands start to tremble and clenches them into fists instead of letting them shake.

He does not mention it even when the day wears on and a surreptitious search through the kitchen yields nothing, and the little ripples inside of him begin to build into waves.

It’s only at dinner, by which time Will is shaking enough that he’s too self-conscious to lift his fork, that he finally asks:

“Where did you move the liquor?”

Hannibal regards him across the table, eyes down at Will’s hands where he has fisted them and set them deliberately against the side of the table. He had wondered how long it would take to ask, certainly much longer than it took to notice.

He takes another bite of dinner, chews and swallows before lifting his eyes to Will and tilting his head.

“I did not move it,” he says honestly. “I emptied the contents into the sink and set the bottles outside.”

He can feel the weight of the silence that follows, settling over them like ice, thick and cracking. Sharp.

Will’s jaw works, the only signal that his pulse just spiked. He hazards a faint smile despite it. It doesn’t reach his eyes.

“You didn’t,” Will says, shaking his head. “That would be exceptionally rude, especially in someone else’s house. Please just tell me,” he asks. Polite. Aware of Hannibal’s awareness of the truth of the situation, but unable to overcome the pounding in his head with anything like the shame he knows he should feel in its place.

“Perhaps,” Hannibal agrees, “in a situation where the substance removed is not in danger of causing harm to the residents of the home.”

He watches the panic rise in Will, watches the shivers take him harder, watches one hand come up to press to his eyes as Will simultaneously tries to calm himself and understand that this isn’t in jest.

“I will deal with the consequences of my rudeness if it ultimately leads to your health, Will,” he adds, sets his cutlery down and threads his fingers together to set the heels of his hands against the cool table. “You would not stop,” he tells him gently, “by willpower or request. So I took away a factor you couldn’t control.”

"You've been here for all of - what, three days?" Will responds, thumb and forefinger still pressed against his eyelids. "It's unfair of you to start making statements like that."

Will leans back in his chair, palms pressed against the edge of the table. "What might be a harm to me isn't something you, in particular, get to really make a call on at this point."

He works over in his mind where there may be more bottles, and remembers moving them all out into the kitchen when he arrived home after Molly left. A frown, brief, as he considers his options.

“I’ve known you for many years, Will,” Hannibal reminds him softly, eyes still focused on the nervous shifting of the man in front of him. It isn’t violence he’s afraid of, violence Will would attempt to inflict on him and find it dispersed and soothed, the energy gone elsewhere. He is worried Will would inflict it on himself. “I knew you when this was your escape before your illness. I knew you when you stopped, and turned to… other means, to ease yourself.”

He swallows.

“I knew you the years you only turned to it in the worst of times, though you refused to know me then.” He had done his research on Will from any point necessary. He knew about Molly and Willy, he knew that Will had been, for a while at least, stable with them. “I ask for your trust,” he adds gently, knowing the response will not be a gentle one back.

There is a silence, and then a breath of laughter, sharper than anything Will could remotely think to say in response to such an absurd request. He stands, setting aside the napkin from his lap, bracing his hands against the back of his chair.

"You also knew me when we shared drinks together," Will reminds him, a firm tone beneath the softness in his voice - an iron glove wrapped in velvet. "When we sat in your office and shared whiskey. When we had wine with dinner - Zinfandel for the jambalaya," he adds, a bitterness just edging into his voice. He touches his tongue against his lips and smiles, pale. "Bottles of wine spilt and shared in your bedroom."

He forces a breath into his lungs, ribs tight to cracking in his chest at the rush of anxiety. "That would make you an enabler, if what you're saying is in any way true. An equally unfair accusation if I were to level it at you."

Will resists the urge to defend himself beyond that - he knows Hannibal's been narrowly observing every sip Will's taken since he arrived, noticed the disapproving look when Will finished off the bottle he'd started on the night he showed up, knows Hannibal can see the tremors for what they are. Outright denial would be too easily rebuffed, although - Will considers - he doesn't necessarily need to explain anything.

At all.

Especially to Hannibal.

"I'll be back in a little while," Will says, rueful, turning from the table and the conversation to find his keys.

Hannibal watches, directs his eyes down as Will passes him again on his way out. He says nothing on the matter of Will’s cards and cash missing from his wallet. Unspent, kept safe, just not _there_. He listens for the sound of the car engine before getting up to collect the remains of dinner to set into the fridge.

Will’s plate is untouched.

It takes perhaps fifteen minutes, enough time for Hannibal to do the dishes and set them away, before the car door slams closed and the front door bangs open. Hannibal does nothing more than fold the towel in his hands and set it to the side of the sink, as he would in his own home.

Will’s words ring in his ears still, of how he has no right to command him in his own house, how he has no right to suggest solutions when he has been nothing but a problem for so long. His lips press together and he counts ten breaths, in and out.

_It will be worse_ , he reminds himself, _if you leave this_.

He doesn’t turn to Will when he comes in, but his shoulders tense in preparation for an argument. Heavy footsteps disappear up the stairs. Silence, for a time, until broken by another sharp bang and footsteps forcibly slowed as they return back down.

Will stops in the entry to the kitchen and levels a gaze at the back of Hannibal's head, watching as he brings a mug of coffee to his lips.

Coffee that Will made, for him.

Will's eyes narrow.

"You've made your point," he finally says, quiet.

Hannibal turns to regard him - Will’s pallor is sheened with sweat, his thinness more pronounced, in stark relief against the deceptive apology in Will's eyes, in his voice.

"This isn't the best way to do this. It's dangerous.” Will approaches slowly, to steady a hand against Hannibal's cheek. "Since I’m predisposed to seizures now,” he adds, pointed, and Will’s knuckles drag gently, fingertips tracing Hannibal’s neck. There’s no lie in his words, but a weakness, splintering beneath them.

“Let me fix this on my own. I’ve done it before,” he continues, fingers curling soft beneath Hannibal’s jaw. “When I’ve had motivation to do so.”

Hannibal keeps pity from his gaze. He pities Will only in what he has to suffer, ahead, and so instead his gaze remains soft. He sets the mug down out of the way and brings the back of his hand up to press to Will’s forehead.

"You will fix this on your own," he agrees, "because as much as I wish I could take that burden from you, it is not one I can." He watches the pain in Will's eyes, the fear and exhaustion there, and wants nothing more than to kiss him. Soothe. Comfort. "But you will not be on your own," he changes the emphasis subtly. "I will not leave you that way."

He turns and sets a glass of water to the counter, slides it closer to Will.

"Drink. You're running a fever."

Will meets him with a bitter smile. “So _this_ is the time you’re going to fix things, rather than just leave them.”

And just as suddenly, Will’s tone turns calm again, calculated into a mirror of Hannibal’s own. “I don’t need help with this.” Will hesitates and draws Hannibal’s hand down from his own brow, holding it in his hands and pressing it against his mouth. “You need to give me a chance.”

He doesn’t take up the glass, just closes his eyes and resists the impulse to draw close against Hannibal - to coax the answer he wants out of tenderness rather than fear or anger - knowing how deeply he’s shaking and how Hannibal would feel every inch of it if he tried.

“I’m going to get sick again,” Will breathes, lips dry against Hannibal’s hand. He thinks of the hospital, of being so lost in himself that he couldn’t find his way out again, and wonders if that’s what’s lurking in the recesses. Fear grips him, the emotion more familiar to Will than even Hannibal’s hand pressed between his own.

Hannibal brings his other hand up to card through the damp strands of Will’s hair, gentle.

"Not in the way you think,” he reassures him. There is no smell of death on him, no sickly sweetness of encephalitis. Just the smell of old alcohol and sick sweat. "I trust you," he adds gently, "to do this. I trust you will."

He cups his hand as Will leans into it, and bends enough to kiss his forehead. The hand in Will’s hair slides down his back, splaying and seeping warmth through the shirt Will wears.

“Then let me do it,” Will insists, eyes closed and trembling as he pulls himself against Hannibal. Resonations through his body, deep reverberations that echo outward through his limbs. “Let me get something so it’s not so bad.”

“I’ll be okay.” A familiar old assurance, spoken with less certainty than Will ever has before. “I just need something now, and then I’ll be okay, and I - we,” he amends quickly. “We can do this.”

Hannibal hums, a gentle noise, and envelopes his arms around the shaking body before him.

"You will," he agrees, "and we can."

For a long moment he doesn’t move, cradling Will’s weak form. He knows he has the patience to resist him, that Will has the power to resist this. It is all to words, now, to gentle actions to prove it for them both.

"You need to stay hydrated," he sighs finally, pulling back to take up the water again, holding it out to Will.

Will’s hands curl into fists at his sides as Hannibal steps back from him. Unsteady, for a moment, but finding the ground beneath his feet. Beneath his words.

“You think I’d have learned by now,” Will responds with thin amusement, “that you can’t stop yourself, can you? What anyone else wants. Needs. None of that matters if it’s not what _you_ want. And you can’t resist changing anything that doesn’t fit that.”

He lets his gaze linger on the glass, untouched - past it. A faint smile, and animosity, caged in his ribs and tearing outward sinew by sinew.

“You didn’t stop me last night, did you? I had something you wanted, so you just let it slide until it’s convenient for you. Until you got what you wanted. Until you get curious. Bored.” A wan smile. “Desperate.”

"Could I have stopped you?" A similarly calm tone, a barely raised eyebrow. Hannibal had known Will was sinking, drunk, and he had let it happen. But he remembers the strength behind Will’s grip, the raw animal pleasure there.

"If it helps you to have an antagonist, Will, you can say many things of me that are both deplorable and true." The glass stays stable, held out but not forced to Will’s grip.

He can see the utter terror behind the flare in Will’s eyes.

“I hoped this time you would be on my side,” Will replies, attention dropping from Hannibal’s eyes to the glass, and back again. Defiant, even as he recognizes the heat of fever prickling cold across his skin. A laugh, low, as Will unclenches his fists and pushes a palm across his face, and turns to make his way unsteadily out of the kitchen.

“I would tell you that there’s better ways to kill me than this, but you’ve already tried all of those.”

Hannibal says nothing, and does not follow him. He knows the process will be painful, that Will would suffer greatly, for many days. He also knows that Will has managed to get clean before. _With the right motivation_.

"And you have never failed to live,” he murmurs to himself, perhaps an answer to Will’s angry remark, perhaps just a reassurance to himself.

Hannibal takes up his coffee again and drinks, savors the heavy thick liquid. He wonders if he will see any more until this is over, from Will in particular. He can make his own but this... this is oddly special to him. He leaves the glass in the middle of the pristine kitchen island, ready for Will when he will accept it, and finally makes his way out into the main house after him, fingers splayed over the mug.

“Curious what’s going to happen?” Will remarks low, feeling more than hearing Hannibal patiently make his way up the stairs.

The same razor-fine nerves sharpened in wait, prickling painful just beneath the surface of his skin, as when Randall Tier stalked his home from the woods. As when he watched Hannibal almost frantic from behind a double-barrier in a desolate hallway. As when he heard a mirror break, shattered by a man who thought he was a dragon.

Will lays motionless on the bed but for the quaking of his body, too far gone to fight now, arm over his eyes and perfectly aware of the movement of air around him.

“Your love of suffering is astounding,” he intones. “Towards me, in particular, but in others, too. Creating and destroying and watching the ants scurry under your feet to rebuild.” Will breathes through his nose, almost a laugh. “I didn’t know you could spread destruction by proxy, though. I’m lucky to have such an excellent teacher.”

The only reply is the quiet click as the mug is set down on the bedside table on the opposite end of the bed to him. The sound of clothes rustling, very soft breathing.

“You know silence is always a sign of passive agreement,” Will adds. For a brief moment the movement stops, then it starts again and Will turns his eyes to regard the man next to him who is stoically, deliberately unmoved by his words. Will can feel his anger like embers in his vessels, knows that what he says will linger for long after and he wishes he could stop.

“You are pathetic in your need for companionship,” he says softly.

At this, Hannibal’s jaw locks, just enough to notice, before he lets out a slow breath through his nose and blinks, turning his head slowly to look at Will where he lies.

“Sometimes our minds find no other way to be truthful than through loss of inhibition,” he says. “These truths have haunted you and eaten at you, they would have continued to do so without this.”

He leans forward to rest his hands on the sheets, curled into gentle fists, knuckles pressing dents into the mattress.

“Say them, Will, I will listen. A detox of your mind will heal you as well as your body. But I will not rise to the bait of anger, I will not give you that.”

“But you’ve already given me so much,” Will replies, feigning quiet surprise.

He watches Hannibal from beneath his arm, frustration in the clench of his fingers - at being made to feel this way, at not being able to stop.

"Last time I got better," Will begins, as though telling a bedtime story, lilting and soft, "I left. I know you remember that, you've had enough time to think about it. A new home. New job. A family." His hand closes into a fist. "Tell me doctor, how does that make you feel? I know you've taken all of those things away now - this, too, on top of everything else - but you seem awfully certain that this time when I get better, I won't do the same thing."

“I am not certain of anything,” Hannibal responds calmly, pushing himself to stand again, hands up to work the buttons of his shirt in quick motions before he slides it off his shoulders, turns to carefully fold it over a chair. “If this gives you clear sight of a situation that you see as detrimental then perhaps it is for the best,” he swallows. “I will not stop you, if your choice will be to leave.”

He can feel the bed shaking when he sits against it to remove his shoes and socks.

He knows that in a few hours Will will push himself up to pace the house, seeking in places he has already checked for alcohol that isn’t there. He knows that a few after that he will return, crawl into bed and curl into a shaking ball trying to stave off the pain.

He anticipates that beyond snarls and anger, he will not get anything from Will until the morning.

Heat radiates from Will despite the thin layer of sweat that should cool him, despite the way he shivers so hard his jaw locks tight.

"Every time we've come together, it ends the same way. You break me and leave me to try to reassemble all the pieces. And then you come back. You come back, once I’ve started fixing myself, and then you break me again."

Will turns onto his side towards Hannibal, to watch him.

To see.

"The fragments are getting finer and finer. There will be nothing left but dust," Will whispers, mouth dry as ash, Cassandra predicting her own demise. “Will you be satisfied then?”

Hannibal would have been satisfied with summer by the river. 

He turns to get into bed, under the covers as Will is over them, and turn just his head to see him where he lies. There is sweat on his brow, more sticking his hair to his scalp. He looks pale, the bags under his eyes stark and his pupils are so small the blue around them looks stormy and unsettled. He can see Will’s pulse hammering against his neck, see his fists held so tight his knuckles are white with it.

“I will be satisfied if you sleep, Will,” he tells him gently.

Despite the exhaustion drawn across his skin, the wear in his muscles from shaking and shaking and shaking, Will looks as far from sleep as he’s ever been.

“I won’t give that to you,” Will echoes, a sharp whisper.

He can’t give that to him, in truth, his body working against him and fighting any quiet desire to just stay still, to breathe, to pull himself into Hannibal’s warmth and let himself be cared for. Stiffly, Will pushes himself upwards, braces against the dizziness of the movement, and shoves himself off the bed. The ground shifts beneath his feet and he braces a hand against the doorway as he drives himself from the room. 

Every cabinet, shelf and drawer is checked, for bottles or money or both. They are then checked again, and again, to ensure that nothing was missed. Will finds nothing and for a dire moment considers just leaving, just going out into the cool night air and into the water and letting it carry him away.

Although the fever scalds him and shivers him all at once, Will does not touch the water that was left for him. Self-destruction as a coping mechanism.

It’s nearly dawn when Will feels himself start to give way. Unsteady legs, like the river pushing fast against him, forces him to the couch and into an uneasy state somewhere between waking and sleeping.

He flinches, wants to snarl when he hears footsteps on the stairs, but the most he manages is a strange little whimpering sound before he curls into himself to stop himself shaking apart.

Hannibal had listened, heard every door opened, every piece of furniture shifted and adjusted, checked for something he knows Will thinks he needs. He knows, too, that Will knows he doesn’t need it, that he wants it, that it will be easier in the long run to drink himself into nothing.

Ashes to ashes.

He considers how long it had taken him to get himself free. How much planning to offer even this much security for himself now, to allow himself at least a month in one place before he should watch over his shoulder. He wonders if he should have left sooner, if he should have sought Will out immediately, taken him with him. They could have run. They would have made it.

He unfolds the blanket in his hands and makes sure to be in Will’s line of sight when he settles it around him, feels the painful heat through it as Will shakes so hard it rattles his teeth. Hannibal sets a hand against his forehead, soothing, cool against his fever, and kneels to look at Will properly.

“You are losing fluids, Will, you need to drink.”

Will shivers beneath the touch and grabs Hannibal’s wrist, a sudden fierce strength despite how he trembles. He holds him there, to turn his face against Hannibal’s hand and breathe against his palm. A familiar gesture drawn from somewhere yet untouched by everything that’s happening - everything that’s happened - as he drinks in the coolness of Hannibal’s skin against his own.

“Fuck.”

Almost amused, dry and dark, in the bleak utterance. Too far gone now to snarl and growl, to lash out with the violence of his words or resist anything but the brief comfort Hannibal’s nearness provides. He doesn’t let him go, neither does he open his eyes, feeling the concern patient and gentle as though it were a touch laid against his head, and he almost laughs when he realizes that Hannibal’s fingers are actually twining soft through his sweat-damp hair.

It’s been so long since he hallucinated that he almost forgot how it feels.

“Kubler-Ross,” Will murmurs, hand pressed over Hannibal’s own to keep it there, to keep him there. “Five stages of grief. People think that it was written for the living, about the dead. Anger, bargaining, denial,” he draws a deep breath that doesn’t fill his lungs as much as it should, shaken right back out of him again. “Depression. Acceptance. She didn’t write it about the dead, she wrote it about the dying.”

Black humor muttered from between Hannibal’s hand and the couch, cushions damp with sweat.

Hannibal continues his gentle caresses, stroking Will’s hair until his shivers slow to irregular shudders, offering him enough space to draw breath, to settle heavy against the couch and pull the blanket closer. He knows Will isn’t sleeping when he pulls away but he goes regardless of the weak sound that follows him.

When he returns he holds the glass, holds also a cool cloth that he presses to Will’s face, now, instead of his own palm, cleaning the sweat from his face, settling it over his eyelids to cool them as well.

“What can you bargain, with the devil?” he asks him gently, curling a palm under the side of Will’s head to raise it, bringing the glass up to his lips and holding it patiently until Will finally relents and ducks his head to sip.

He chokes twice, taking too much, shivering, jerking at the feeling of it, but he manages half a glass before Hannibal takes it away.

“Everything,” Will answers softly, coughing again and watching the water as it’s taken away. He can hardly close his hands around the blanket enough to drag it higher, around his chin, shivering and scalding, freezing and feverish. “Just have to hope it ends up being worth it.”

Will drags a hand slowly beneath the blanket to press against his stomach. To feel the scar there, a sound like relief passing as a soft noise from his lips. Familiarity in this, his own body, however marred.

“Stitches,” he murmurs to his doctor, recounting a dream that once wasn't, as Hannibal draws away the cloth to be carefully refolded. “All night. Ripping them over and over. I couldn’t stop.”

_How often did you think of me in the hospital?_

“I know,” Hannibal murmurs, brows drawn in concern as he watches Will’s body suffer. “You left the scar raised.”

He knows Will should be in bed, upstairs, but he won’t move him now, not when he’s like this. He will need to get a bucket for him, for when his body decides it no longer needs the contents of its stomach. That the only sustenance it needs is liquid and heavy, sharp and acidic.

Eating at bones. Eating at the brain.

_Blood drips on the floor, one two three four._

Hannibal stands again, to return the cloth to the kitchen and take up a large mixing bowl to set by the couch for later. When he comes back, Will is making soft moaning sounds with every exhale, brows drawn in pain, body shaking again. He can see that he’s sweated through his shirt fully now.

Without a word, he turns Will gently so his face is towards the cool dark of the back of the couch, and settles himself in behind him, arm around his middle, fingers laced to keep Will’s from tearing at his skin. He buries his face against the back of Will’s neck and kisses there.

His body is still in violent revolution against itself, waves of nausea rolling through him, suppressed by dry swallows, an occasional tremor that draws soft sounds of pain from him when they snap tight through muscles exhausted beyond anything he's ever known.

It takes a long time for Will to stop shaking as hard, and settle. More than the blanket to warm him against the chill, more than the feel of the cushions cool against his skin, it's beneath Hannibal's arm that Will finds anything like quiet when at least his thoughts grow still, the panic and anxiety that ripped at him as his fingers once tore at wounds inflicted by the one who now eases that fear away, rubs slow along his arm, breathes quiet soothing sounds against his skin.

A conspicuous presence, to fill the absence.

"What would you have done?" Will asks.

_If you had succeeded._

_If he had succeeded._

_Without me._

No longer words intended to create new wounds or reopen old ones, but a desperate hope that his past tense can remain just that in earnest this time.

Will knows his own answer, he proved his morals with his choices when given a choice as to the method of their shared dismemberment. He swallows dryly, guilt clicking soft in his throat, and presses trembling back deeper into Hannibal's arms. Guilt for his betrayal, for his abandonment, for Molly and for this, here, weak and useless with nothing more inside than a blind hope that the pieces haven't already been ground into dust.

Hannibal slides an arm under Will’s shoulders and bends it to sweep his fringe off his face, to press his cool hand against the cold sweat and fever there.

“I would have gone,” he tells him honestly, tone quiet, exhausted beyond more than what a sleepless night could excuse. He allows Will to press back, holding the precarious balance for them so they don’t topple, before gently coaxing Will closer against the couch for comfort, to let the back of it stifle the sunlight that’s slowly seeping across the room with dawn.

“I would have followed,” he murmurs.

Beneath his hand, Hannibal feels Will start to shake again, but it’s not fever, this time it’s something deeper, harsher than that, a sob without a sound, a bone-deep anguish and pain that he can’t release or let go. Hannibal’s eyes close tight, he swallows. How can he take this away if he pushed it so far into him that Will feels it part of himself? Integral?

He lets out a breath and kisses behind Will’s ear.

Then he starts to hum, just gently, but it’s a melody Will’s heard before, just once. And then, too, it had set his muscles looser, kept his fear at bay.

Will listens, through the haze and the fire. A resonance counter to the violence that has shaken Will to pieces, meeting the vibrations the stem from somewhere deep inside and dispersing them.

He listens and he remembers and it tugs at him, a gentle pull, when Will recalls that only two people in the world have ever heard this song in this way. Bringing Hannibal's hand up from his stomach, Will sighs soft against his palm, as the tension snapped tight in him relaxes just a little. Just enough.

He lets the question rest, accepts the answer and doesn't say how glad he is to hear it because at least, had it come to that, he would have gone first.

Will sleeps, in the smoke and the flames.

The immolation is cruel, dying down only to find more old growth and consume it revived in an inferno of pain and anguish and fury. Will hurts and he burns and he hates and when he lashes out it's not only at Hannibal but increasingly himself - unwanted, undeserving.

But even when his teeth are bared and he snarls violence in his words, he knows the gentle hands and gentler words that ease him through it as best as anyone could hope to. To those, Will draws himself when there's nothing left but ash, brittle and soft, to let Hannibal bring him back together again and again, curling close against him, pulling him near, seeking him out. The only presence that fills the void now, and promises regrowth after the fire.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Silkie chicken and anise?” Will asks, amused._
> 
> _Hannibal’s lips curve up, eyes narrowing in pleasure at the memory, bittersweet though it was, and he confirms, “Chicken soup.”_

It’s only on the third day that Will sits up to accept food.

Hannibal had spent those days always close by, finally coaxing Will upstairs to bed, cleaning out the bowl when he was sick, bringing him cool cloths for his his head and eyes, holding him when he slept. He tries to not remember the cruelties that left Will’s mouth on days and hours when the pain got too much and he lashed Hannibal with blame. Again and again and harsher every time. And every evening after he would apologise and curl up and shake and another day would be over.

The clear broth in Will’s bowl is aromatic but not overly creative, bland enough to settle his stomach and slowly drip him sustenance while his body recovers. 

He looks half-dead, pale and sweaty, shadows appearing to make the bones on his face seem starker. He’s lost weight. But he takes the bowl with a smile and tilts his head.

“Silkie chicken and anise?” Will asks, amused.

Hannibal’s lips curve up, eyes narrowing in pleasure at the memory, bittersweet though it was, and he confirms, “Chicken soup.”

Will breathes it in, desperate to smell something other than himself or vomit or the phantom scents of dogs and oranges and pine that have woken him, startled, more than once. There’s a moment of misgiving, a mixture of dire hunger and nausea turning his stomach, before he lifts the spoon.

Gratitude, profound, in the quiet noise Will makes when he tastes it.

He stretches, flinching uncomfortable in his own skin, and slides his legs over the sheets. Presses his toes against Hannibal’s leg, and then pushes them underneath.

“I’ve missed your cooking,” Will says, forcing himself to take the soup down slower than he would like. “Cooking with you.”

Hannibal rests a hand against Will’s ankle and gently rubs there as he watches him eat. If he can keep it down, the broth will be Will’s staple three times a day until he can take solid food as well. It may take time for his body to accept anything at all.

“I have missed cooking for someone,” he replies. He remembers the first few months in prison, how difficult it was for him to eat anything there, to breathe properly. Everything had been crowded, filled with bodies and noise and exhaustion and fear. “Perhaps by the end of the week you can help with dinner.”

A light in Will’s eyes, despite the dark circles wrung under them, as he glances upwards at this and smiles - brief but warm - at the suggestion. From beneath his hair he studies briefly the lines of Hannibal’s shoulders under the old t-shirt taken from Will’s closet, the shape of them, strong still but older somehow, more weight on them bearing down invisible, to create curve that never quite straightens.

Will turns his attention back to his soup and pushes his feet a little deeper beneath Hannibal’s thigh.

“We’ll have to get things,” he comments, almost absently. “For the kitchen.”

"We will," Hannibal assures him, watching the way Will looks at him, turns and shifts uncomfortably in his body. It feels tight on him, as though his skin is about to burst and take Will with it to nothing. "Eat,” he adds, unnecessarily, as Will does. “When you are finished I will draw you a bath."

He can see the keen awareness in Will’s eyes, of his surroundings and not his hallucinations, of the dankness of the room, the heaviness of his hair matted and sweaty against his forehead.

The house needs air. Will needs it more so.

"I do not trust you alone in the shower," Hannibal smiles.

“ _I_ don’t trust me alone in a shower,” Will agrees, rueful. Quick tension in his jaw, a brief twist of his stomach that he fights down again, followed by a pale smile.

He rubs the back of his hand across his forehead, through the sweat that blooms there, and tries to draw out the brief lucidity that’s found him through the waking dreams and spitting anger and relentless tremors that have for now at least stilled to a manageable tremble. Holding onto the conversation, to Hannibal warm against his feet, to the thin hope that there’s time and space beyond this body and this bed and this house.

Will feels his stomach surge again and sighs, mournful, at the bowl of half-finished soup.

“You’re brave to stay here,” Will remarks after a long moment. But the words lean too close against uncomfortable truths and he adds, with dry humor, “I must smell like death.”

Hannibal makes a noise, as though agreeing or simply considering the choice of words.

"Quite the contrary," he says at length. “You smell of life and living. Unrefined, of course.” His eyes narrow, pleased. “But there is no death on you."

He stands from the bed, taking the bowl from Will when he simply slips the spoon into and out of it in slow circles. He bends to stroke a hand gently through Will’s hair before pressing the tip of his nose against him. A nuzzle more than a kiss.

"Though a bath would not hurt."

The curl of Hannibal’s fingers against Will’s scalp, the fondness of the gesture, draws an explosive shiver. Different than the convulsive shaking of the prior few days, this one prickling goosebumps down his skin and pulling a quiet sigh from Will’s pale lips.

He waits, watches Hannibal go from the room and wants desperately to call him back, to not let him disappear around the corner in case this, too, is a hallucination. He pulls his knees aching to his chest and rests his hands over his feet to warm them now that Hannibal’s legs are gone, feeling fear pull at him from a distance, like an acquaintance waving hello from the opposite side of the street. He acknowledges it with a quiet hum, and releases a short sigh, breath he didn’t realize he was holding in anticipation, when he hears Hannibal’s voice again and the rush of water stops.

Unsteady on his feet, Will makes his way to the bathroom, the lingering clarity suddenly making him acutely aware of how uncomfortable he is. How tensed his body despite its exhaustion from trying to tear itself apart, how unbalanced his stomach even with that small sustenance, and the grime of sweat and illness clinging to his skin.

He avoids looking at the mirror as he leans against the bathroom door.

“What will we make? For dinner.”

“Anything you will be able to enjoy without discomfort,” Hannibal replies, running a hand through the water to check the temperature, keeping it warm enough to not be detrimental to Will’s health, not hot enough to hurt the confusion that is his senses.

The water smells aromatic, not citrus or pine, something new. Sandalwood perhaps, something masculine and gentle and soothing. He flicks the water from his fingers and straightens, turning to look at Will before, after a brief hesitation, holding his hand out to him.

“Perhaps nothing, yet, with the amount of chili pepper you prefer to suffuse your meals with.”

The words draw Will back from trying to sort out if what he's smelling is really there or not. He studies Hannibal from the short distance between them, infinitesimal compared to those that were between them before, expression softening despite the hard edges his features have taken on.

He draws a deep, sudden breath, to ease the bruising he feels across his chest as memories well up fast, although - for the first time in very long - they are neither unpleasant nor unwelcome.

"Soon, maybe," Will hopes.

Will pushes slowly out of his boxers and runs a hand along his stomach, across his scar, a habitual gesture rather than a nervous one, before taking Hannibal's hand. Too worn now to fight to cover any of them, no reason to try after Hannibal insisted on pressing his mouth and fingers to every single mark, and seen him far worse than simply scarred.

His feet sink one at a time, slow, into the bathwater and he grips Hannibal's hand to lower himself into it. Stiff from lack of movement, from too much movement, from everything being too sharp and too hard and then the gaping nothing that follows it.

The water is warm. Will sighs, and his eyes close.

Hannibal leaves him settled, keeps the door open as he goes back to the bedroom to throw the windows wide and let the breeze air the fever from the room. Then he changes the sheets, a quick meticulous process, perfect folds on the corners, sheet and duvet carefully turned back sheet and ready for Will to return. For them both to.

When he returns, Hannibal lingers in the doorway before stepping close enough to draw a hand over Will’s forehead, swiping the hair from it and feeling that his temperature is cooler. Will’s breathing has eased in the warm water that holds his limbs suspended, and his eyes remain closed.

“If there was a way for me to let you sleep in here, I would,” Hannibal says quietly, perhaps to himself more than to Will, but he doesn’t stop touching him.

Will breathes through his nose, an almost-laugh.

“What’s the worst that could happen?”

He sinks down a little more into the water, until it’s just beneath his mouth and he has to draw his knees up in the small tub. A tug of memory at this, as well, when there enough room in the bath for Will to lay reclined between Hannibal’s legs until the water turned cold and they pulled each other back into bed to warm themselves against the other.

Memories on top of memories, pathways trod deep through his thoughts in circles. Warm flushes of whispered adoration replaced with terse whispers and blood, wiped away by soft touches so it can all begin again. Endless carved circles that Will endeavored to drown, now surfacing as the waters abate.

He withholds the urge to tread those routes again, whether for nostalgia or for vengeance. There’s not enough light left in the day before Will sinks into darkness again and so instead he murmurs against Hannibal’s hand.

“You wouldn’t live with dogs.” A question, couched as a gentle admonishment.

A sigh, soft, before Hannibal grasps Will’s shoulders to slide him further down the bath so he can lay his head in the water, and let Hannibal stroke the dirt and mess and sweat out of his hair.

“Past tense,” is all he says in answer, nails gently scratching Will’s scalp until the other shivers, eyes closing in pleasure at the familiar sensation. Hannibal reaches for the shampoo, lathers enough in his hands to clean the strands and not leave them messy with it. He lifts Will’s head out of the water enough for the soap to take. Another, gentler sort of worship.

When Hannibal dips Will’s head back again to rinse, he brings his lips to Will’s forehead.

"You would have though," Will decides, finally. "Given time."

Bringing a wet hand to Hannibal's face, Will tilts his head up. A kiss, lingering, pressed to just the corner of his mouth. Unspoken gratitude - for this, for dinner, for coming, for staying, for caring. For everything, before the kindling in him starts to ignite again and flares fierce and hungry with desperation.

He returns his hand to the weightlessness of water.

“There’s boxes in,” Will starts to say a name, hesitates. “In the small bedroom.” He slides down into the water enough to let the soap filter from his hair. “A small one in the back still has something in it that I want. Kept.” A faint smile, bittersweet, eyes closing. “Don’t let me forget it, if we go.”

Will drags a handful of water up over his face, fingers pressing against his eyes, running over his beard, over the scars, and there is a pique of curiosity in Hannibal’s attention, in the slightest movement of a brow at the suggestion. Another brush of fingers through Will’s hair before Hannibal raises from the edge of the tub to make his way there.

The blinds are drawn in the bedroom, empty for long enough now to be called unused, with marks still in the carpet where furniture sat years before. Sky blue walls, painted bright, and in the corner a few boxes marked with innocuous names - CLOTHES, BOOKS, and so on. The smallest box - OLD scrawled in black marker - sits against the wall and the tape, brittle with dust, peels easily free beneath Hannibal’s fingers.

A few books, well-read with cracked spines. Little dog figures that once stood on the mantle above the fireplace in Wolf Trap. A shirt. There’s no trace of documents - Will’s diploma the appropriate thickness for him to patch a hole in the wall, hospital paperwork thrown away as soon as the doors closed behind him - or signs of his work in New Orleans, Baltimore, the FBI, teaching. Odds and ends, instead, the scattered belongings of someone who didn’t know how to sort through the wreckage of a cataclysm - a mess of the functional and impractical, the distillation of a life that stopped making sense.

Beneath the ruins, an old vinyl record, Miles Davis, faded to paler kind of blue. The only remnant with which Will couldn’t part, for which he fought to keep, urgent insistence breaking through months of silence to beg Alana to get it from the house in Baltimore before they cleared it. She understood - the evidence of what had transpired in that house was everywhere, the slow subsumation of two parts into a whole until they were again torn asunder - and when he was released he took the album from her with guilty thanks and he put it in a box and there it lay, untouched, unplayed, but held.

Safe.

Will always thought that in a fire, it would be the first thing he would save. He just hadn’t imagined that he would be setting those fires himself, in handing Hannibal the matches.

The silence is broken by the sounds of sickness from the bathroom, a grumbled curse and a flush. Will is back in the bathtub, sulking, when Hannibal finds him again.

“Sorry,” Will mutters around his toothbrush, held motionless between his teeth.

Hannibal just watches him, record still carefully held in his hands, as Will sits in the bath with his shoulders hunched and his hair dripping into his face, and it tugs something in his chest so hard he holds his breath.

He turns to set the record in the other room, on the nightstand where it won’t be damaged, and returns to Will. He checks the temperature of the water, drains enough to fill it anew with hotter water, feeling Will shift in it until it no longer burns his skin but warms it. When he stands to get him a glass to rinse his mouth and keep the bath water clean even a little longer, Will grasps his sleeve, just holds a moment, before glancing up.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Hannibal assures him, feels the tug grow a little more insistent, and remembers the night he had held Will terrified against him, the night he had shown Will just how small a chance he had had to escape him and live. He stays still, allows the contact, before turning his hand to grasp Will’s fingers as he reaches for the glass instead.

Rinse, spit, glass returned and set to the sink before Hannibal toes off his shoes, bends to pull his socks off, one hand still held captive in Will’s grip. For a moment he hesitates, considers, and then it doesn’t matter.

None of it.

He shifts Will forward, a bare push to his back to move him, and climbs into the bath behind him, clothes hungrily soaking up the water as he settles. Will turns, surprised, and moves to settle against Hannibal’s chest when he’s fully reclined in the small bath. The water barely skirts the edge and Hannibal sighs, his smile evident.

“See?” he says softly.

Will huffs a laugh, small and sweet and genuine, and sinks deeply against him.

Every part of him hurts to be touched, as though bruised across each muscle that's tried so hard to rip itself from his bones, an unsettling ache that presses blues and greens behind his eyes. But this, now, is a sweeter pain, worth the discomfort to feel the rise and fall of Hannibal's breath against his back, the weight of Hannibal's arm draped softly over his chest, hand pressed over his heart as though to soothe its exhausted shudder.

The tension eases, little by little, beneath the stroking of Hannibal's hand against his skin, and Will feels fading with it the venom that's burned caustic in paroxysms of spite and bitterness and grief. The wounds aren't healed, but this has staunched the flow of blood.

Just this. Just them. Alone, together, as only they can be.

Will lifts an arm and loops it back around Hannibal's neck, letting it rest loose against his shoulder, fingers draped against the wet shirt he wears. A whisper, turned against Hannibal's cheek. "You left your socks on the floor."

Hannibal smiles, then he smiles wider, a hand coming up to press against his eyes before he sighs and returns to gently caressing Will as he lays against him. After, he will try Will on broth again, be there to soothe him if it comes back up.

"You said one day I would,” he reminds him, soft, nuzzling against his wet hair and fevered skin. "You also said you would never mention it when it came up."

He hums, pleased.

"Liar."

Another little sigh, nearing a laugh, a curl of pleasure as these memories rise to the surface - when they breathed promises against each other's lips with affection and tenderness, aching with an eager joy. The promise in being able to even speak them to each other again is enough to pull a different sort of ache across Will’s chest, and he finds it welcome.

Will turns his head just enough that he feels Hannibal’s nose against his cheek. “I guess this makes us even, then.” He shifts a little, skims his fingers along Hannibal’s legs to feel the heavy fabric beneath the water. “New routines,” he suggests, followed by a pale smile.

"All routines begin somewhere," Hannibal allows, ducking his head to breathe softly against Will’s hair. He feels the weight of Will against him, feels his heart beat steady, slowing to a resting rhythm.

He wonders how long they can stay here before the water cools, before it gets uncomfortable. Before their limbs sag in tiredness and warm water and they nap together as they used to on lazy winter afternoons. Just them, the warmth between them, and nothing else in the world.

"Do you suggest making a habit of clothed bathing?" he asks gently, smiling and running a hand down the smooth line of Will’s back. "Or of the warm company?"

Will runs a hand down his face, insufficient to hide the faint grin that appears, and reaches back again to push his wet fingers through Hannibal’s hair. No walls between them for now, though Will knows they will rebuild and need to be brought down again. He can simply hope that each time they rise lower than the last.

“I should say both, if only to see you do this again in one of your suits,” Will muses. “Although seeing you in a waistcoat on the beach might be sufficient enough.”

It’s a thought that draws a warm flush across his cheeks, different than the torrid scarlet of fever or the rough ruddy burn of anger. Gentler than most of the memories that skip and pop and hiss like a record played too often. Will, in frozen Baltimore, curled beneath a pile of blankets, watching in fascination as Hannibal transformed through precise movements and elegant arrangements of clothing from the sometimes yielding, sometimes fierce man he drew his hands over bare at night and pressed himself against, into someone he knew equally as well, but removed and taller somehow, elevated above everything around him.

A quiet worry, as he wonders how Hannibal will transform himself away from winter, someplace warm. Like the first bubbles trickling quickly in a pot beginning to boil, a building awareness of the precariousness of their situation. His own weakness, now especially, and Hannibal’s exposure in being here, rippling into thoughts that force his brow to furrow.

“When can we go?” Will asks, gently, turning onto his side in the confines of the bathtub and sending water sloshing over the edges. He curls near again and lets his hand run over the wet t-shirt clinging to Hannibal’s chest, the tremble of his fingers ignored in favor of tracing absent lines against him.

“If you go, I would follow you,” he murmurs, quick to add - before the words sit too heavy, “It seems like you’ll need someone to pick up after you, anyway.” Will glances sidelong at the socks, unable to resist clucking his tongue. “Full-time job.”

Hannibal ignores the spilled water, settles his arms over Will's body and gently strokes the shaking out of his skin.

"We will go when you're well,” he assures him, soft, voice already loud in the tile bathroom when it echoes. "When you can walk and sit up and eat,” he sighs, cupping his hand to lightly push water up over Will’s shoulder where it rests bare and drying cool. "Then we can forget this, leave the memories."

He pulls Will up against him and tilts his chin to kiss him. Will tastes like toothpaste and warmth, with the lingering stench of alcohol no longer surrounding him like a cloud.

"Leave… _some_ memories,” he promises Will gently, in French.

“I’ll try,” Will responds, earnest, the most he can promise. To find new pathways to tread, new routes to redraw through his synapses - to let the old ones soften and fade, as much a part of him as any scar but noticed less and less with time.

He leans up again, agreement sealed in another lingering kiss that draws a little deeper this time. Desire tugs at Will for more strength than he has to give it, but for now it’s enough to feel the nearness of them, the gentle explorations, relearning the soft push and pull of the other’s mouth against their own. A brush of tongues, light enough that Will makes a little noise, and leans nearer in pursuit of that feeling again, pinpricks rising into a shiver from the sensation.

Will curls his fingers along Hannibal’s cheek, to feel the movements of his jaw, to trace the lines of his face, to adjust the old memories with new. The only sound is the water sloshing against the tub, the quiet drips over the edge. The rest beyond they can only feel: blood rushing against their ears, hearts slowly beating in time and faster.

Hannibal’s hands settle lower on Will’s hips but he doesn’t tug him up, just holds, familiar lines with sharper edges. He can feel the tremors start again, like an earthquake just below the surface, bone-deep and painful. He kisses Will a little harder then pulls back.

"Bed?"

It's soft, no suggestion intended beyond the fact.

Another sound now, beyond sighs and soft moans - a note of protest, against the renewed revolt of his body and against leaving the warm water and against being any further away from Hannibal than Will is right now. He grins quickly, though, as he takes in the soaked clothes, blushing in pleasure at the sight of Hannibal so entirely given over to him, to please him, to be a comfort to him.

It’s surprising how well it works.

Will shifts to allow Hannibal out before him, observing with quiet amusement the way his clothes cling to him, dripping all across the floor as he offers Will a hand. He stands unsteadily, grimacing at the itch beneath his skin, scurrying like insects over his nerves and sending them twitching in response. A black hunger still roils ominously, a thunderous dread that he’ll never feel right again, that this pain and this want and this discomfort will be his life forever, and his mind whispers promises of how easy it could be to numb it all to peace again.

Mind and body at war, need and want, and Will grinds a hand against his eyes in irritation.

Hannibal wraps the towel around Will securely, letting the vestigial comfort of being held soothe his shaking while he himself peels out of his clothes and dries quickly. 

The day is late, now, the sun just barely warming the sky with light. They have nothing to do but prepare for another night. Made easier, Hannibal hopes, with clean sheets and clean skin.

He will try the broth again.

He finds Will in the bedroom already, curled up on the bed still in his towel, and pulls the blankets over him before coaxing the damp towel from under his body and away.

The broth stays down longer this time, eaten in sullen silence and lost again in much the same tenor. A flare of anger when it happens and Will clenches his hands into fists and he feels how weak they are and then a darker rage there, as embers glowing.

Despite it, for the first full night since Hannibal arrived, Will doesn’t turn on him. No whispered observations of Hannibal’s failings, no hissed reminders of his choices and his morals, no sobbing snarling insistence to kill him or to leave.

He barely sleeps, still snared by sudden surges of anxiety that send him pacing, whimpering soft with pain and exhaustion, through the house, and then dragging himself back into bed alongside Hannibal to steal his warmth and let the worry be stroked from his back and his hair. Quiet murmurs to describe the phantom smells and sounds, to give voice to the way he aches and burns, and to remind himself that it’s his body that’s broken, not his mind, although quietly, he doubts.

He will always doubt.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“I missed you.” French, breathed soft against Hannibal’s shoulder._
> 
> _Hannibal’s hands still, the muscles in his shoulders work in a gentle stretch, and he leans back into the warmth of Will, the weight of him._
> 
> _"I never stopped," he replies._

On the sixth day, Will is not in bed when Hannibal wakes.

Neither is he in the bathroom hunched over the toilet or seated on the cool tile to be closer to it. Though a blanket is left there, he’s not on the couch where Hannibal still finds him from time to time, to coax back upstairs to the bed instead.

Will is in the kitchen, still in boxers though not at the table, eating whole-grain toast that he can readily keep down now. Instead he stands, hands braced against the counter in case this momentary strength suddenly leaves him. He’s on one foot, the other scratching soft against his leg, and he watches the coffee brew with a particular narrowed interest, a vague mistrust in the little machine.

The fear that had gripped Hannibal cold eases, softens to something entirely different, something warm and familiar, and in his exhaustion enough to tug something deep in his chest hard enough to ache.

The machine clicks and Will grins, pleased with the fact that a six day absence did not allow the machine to forget its true master. When he sets his foot down to the floor he stands on his toes - too cold.

Hannibal watches, yet unseen, as Will pours the coffee, pours one for himself, and watches the steam rise from both mugs with a smile. He runs his palm warm over the steam, through it, upsetting the motion of it. It's so normal, so calm and quiet and reminiscent of mornings in Wolf Trap, that Hannibal swallows, steps further into the space, and finally catches Will’s attention. 

"I was going to surprise you,” Will grins, crooked, and Hannibal swallows all other words from him with a kiss, deep and hot and grateful.

There’s almost a laugh, breathed quick through his nose as Hannibal's hands frame his face and hold him there, deepening the kiss until Will has to lower off his toes to steady himself. He brushes his fingers down Hannibal's face, from the drape of hair that's fallen into his eyes and over his cheek to settle against his shoulder.

"You haven't even tried it yet," Will murmurs ruefully when they part just enough to breathe, before that breath is stolen too by another lingering kiss. Will leans into it this time, open-mouthed and a little eager in the sweet sound he makes. He wraps his hand in the soft shirt Hannibal wears, and sets down the mug in his hand to press that one too against Hannibal's chest, to feel the way his heart has sped and to know that it does so only for him.

"Breakfast, maybe?" Will asks, hopeful, as they press their foreheads together. A nuzzle, touching his nose alongside Hannibal's, his increasing hunger for food outweighed only by his hunger for this, now that the fever has broken and he's said all the things he could ever hope to say, good and bad.

Nearness, as though - for now - nothing had transpired at all between this moment, here, and the last comfortable, lazy morning they shared warming each other in Wolf Trap.

Hannibal smiles, arms warm around Will as he just holds him, pressed close and gentle.

"Breakfast,” he agrees. It had become easier, following Will’s recovery, to following his eating routines. Broth, tea, dry toast and very little else. His mind has been occupied with more important things than elaborate meals. But he knows the fridge is stocked, the pantry comfortably filled with usable things.

"What shall we make?"

"Cereal," Will answers, if only for the disapproving hum that it earns him. Weak enough still to feel the pull of gravity against his exhausted limbs, he leans against Hannibal and lets himself be supported. He's thin, in Hannibal's arms, sharp angles aching to be made soft again and Will flushes comforted by the thought that Hannibal will ensure that they are.

"Something sweet," Will suggests instead. "I learned how to make biscuits. With butter, honey." Will doesn't say her name, still, doesn't bring the memory of Molly's big southern breakfasts and bigger smile to mingle in the air between them. "You can do something with eggs," Will decides, and leaves it vague so that he can hear Hannibal decide, and describe in the soft curl of his accent. An echo of unease in his stomach, a far cry from the days spent twisting violently, and easily suppressed.

Hannibal hums, considers, and presses his lips to Will’s temple gently.

"Perhaps French toast then,” he says, a meal that would combine sweetness with eggs, and keep Will away from that awful fake sugar. "With butter and cinnamon. Honey glaze and lavender." He smiles at Will’s expression, knowing that he wonders how Hannibal can make something as simple as toast something elaborate and gaudy.

"But if," he adds with a slight smile, "the taste is not to your liking, perhaps an opportunity for _cereal_ will be made available. Will you help with breakfast?"

“Lavender?” Will blinks, surprised, and then nods a little, pleased when it allows him an opportunity to nuzzle lightly against Hannibal again. “I’ll try.” He catches Hannibal in another kiss, and then another, small, quick before he makes himself draw away to take a sip of coffee.

He all but groans at the taste of it, turning to lean against the counter. “I don’t even know if it’s good. It’s just _coffee_. I feel like it’s been years.”

Will carries it with him as he moves through the kitchen, a little wide-eyed at how relatively well-stocked it’s become in his present absence. He’s content, as ever, to sort through things to find what Hannibal needs, to stir here or watch this pan or mix that with this. Pale, still, from the effort but he manages - makes himself manage - so that he can lean just lightly with his shoulder against Hannibal’s as they work, or draw his hands along the small of his back, or simply watch him with surreptitious little smiles, trying not to stare too long and getting caught doing so, more often than not.

It’s when Hannibal is turning the French toast over, piece by piece, that Will wraps an arm around him from behind, still grasping his mug in the other hand.

“I missed you.” French, breathed soft against Hannibal’s shoulder.

Hannibal’s hands still, the muscles in his shoulders work in a gentle stretch, and he leans back into the warmth of Will, the weight of him.

"I never stopped," he replies, just as quiet. Just as honest. He sets the spatula down, careful, and turns in Will’s hold to look at him, to draw cool palms over Will’s face, through his hair.

"I felt your absence everywhere."

Will draws a breath, commits the words to memory, the gentle earnest tone of them and the feel of Hannibal’s hands smoothing back his hair. He turns his face against Hannibal’s hand and watches his face, his eyes, with warm breath sighed soft as he speaks.

“I felt your presence. I never stopped,” Will echoes. “All the time. In the hospital,” he swallows softly, “I only spoke to you. Your voice, sometimes I swear I - I felt you there and you were warm and it was so fucking real and even when I hated you, I still just,” another pause, shaking his head, quieting even further. “You were the only thing I wanted.”

A sigh, and Hannibal leans in to kiss Will's forehead, a lingering thing, heavy with all the years they both suffered for their misunderstandings, their anger. 

"You have me,” he tells him. “Always."

Behind him, the butter pops in the pan, and Hannibal reluctantly lets Will go to tend to the food. He smiles wider when Will follows him only to lean into him again. Content to stay that way, rubbing his palm languidly against Hannibal’s stomach, until the toast is done and he takes his plate with a slight smile and drops into a seat at the table.

Will’s certain he’s never tasted anything so satisfying, and he tells Hannibal so in no uncertain terms. He’s grateful to feel the weight of it in his stomach, as well, without an immediate response in reverse, and he drags the last bits of it through the honey on his plate before finishing.

Settling back in his chair with a pleased noise, Will lifts his feet up to rest them across Hannibal’s lap. Moving back into his space, drawn into his gravity. Will takes a slow sip of coffee from the mug cradled between thin fingers, and watches him from across the table.

“Can I be honest?”

“I would like to think so,” responds Hannibal, brow lifting in the barest hint of concern.

Will sets his mug on the table and draws a long breath, sighing it out just as slowly.

“I want, very much, to spend the day in bed with you,” he says, as evenly as though he were discussing the finer points of fly fishing, “without my being sick as the reason for it.”

Hannibal's lips part slightly before he swallows, pleased. The smile on his face soft and only the gentlest hint of dangerous. He brings a hand down to rest over Will’s ankles, stroking the skin. He doesn’t admit the relief, the warmth that settles over him at the words, the suggestion behind them.

"Quid pro quo?" he offers after a moment, watching Will’s throat work to swallow before he nods, his cheeks flushed just enough.

"I don't think," he pauses, eyes down to the table before he smiles wider, "the dishes will hold my attention. I may forgo them, against my very nature." His eyes narrow in great amusement.

“You _have_ changed,” Will muses. He slides down further into his chair, pressing his toes into Hannibal’s stomach to warm them. “I’m glad to know that I register as at least marginally more interesting than washing dishes.”

He hides a smile behind his mug, finishing his coffee. A desire to let himself stop worrying, at least for a time, and allow the comfort that the moment brings. A hope that this could work again, between them, and a curiosity, eager, to feel Hannibal’s body pressed against his own again.

“My turn,” Will says, leaning over the table, elbows resting against the edge. He chews his lip for a moment, and his voice lowers, blue eyes bright and mischievous beneath his shaggy hair.

“I’ve thought about doing this a lot, too. My feet still get so cold at night.”

Hannibal allows the press of cold toes to his stomach through the fabric of his shirt, he allows Will to settle comfortably, to smile, relax with it, before turning the hand against his ankle just enough to run the point of his middle finger over the sole of Will’s foot, eliciting the predicted jerk that tickling brings, and a quick retreat.

“I’ve spent time learning how to both welcome and avoid you doing that a lot,” Hannibal admits, his turn at honesty, and smiles wide when Will’s cheek flush with both pleasure and a challenge to overcome. A flutter of familiarity, to have this play out as a game of words and jests, innuendos and grins. “Any more honesty before I take you to bed?”

A shiver, quick, at the words that fall so effortlessly from Hannibal’s mouth, easing into the space that’s suddenly opened between them. Something Will spent more time thinking about than warming his feet, or cooking together, but with as equal a fondness as he felt desire. He doesn’t tell Hannibal how much it ached to miss him in that way, in particular, how often he let his memory trail over the intricacies of Hannibal’s body, his movements, his breath and the murmured words that passed between them in those moments.

In another lifetime, of 7:30 appointments spoken at a distance, an elegant dance of words around what they meant to say, Will would wonder aloud at his seeming need to be consumed. Not by the thoughts of crime scenes and death that pry into his thoughts unwanted, but those moments when by his own choice he allows - wants - himself to be subsumed. By Molly’s careful but firm guidance, by the drinks that provided a necessary numbness, and always - always - by relinquishing himself to Hannibal, entirely.

Will clears his throat, and nods.

No lies, no omissions.

“Yes,” Will decides, finger trailing the rim of his empty mug. “You are - still - excruciatingly handsome.”

He lets the confession linger there, flushed a little from the admission, and then fights down a smile that twitches brief in the corners of his mouth. “Okay,” he adds quickly, pressing his lips together and letting his gaze turn away, almost shy. “You can take me to bed now.”

Hannibal’s eyes don’t widen, they don’t blink or get darker, they warm. They genuinely warm, with something Will sees in a brief moment of bravery as he looks back at him. The expression he had seen a few times when they had been together, on the lazy mornings, the late-night whispered conversations between them. It’s an expression of Hannibal as he could have been, would have been, without the pain in which he armored himself. An utterly charming look, and one Will knows is not bestowed on anyone else. When he looks away again, Hannibal’s eyes follow the path of his.

When Hannibal stands, it’s to walk around the table to where Will sits and tilts his chin back to him. How can he tell him? That Will is most beautiful in his honesty, that his smile warms a room when it’s genuine and wide, that the months that they had spent entirely consumed by each other were the most comfortable and gentle and treasured memories Hannibal has?

“You make me feel safe,” he tells him gently, eyes crinkling with a smile, before leaning in to kiss Will softly, a gentle push of lips to lips, urgency humming hot beneath, before he lets him go. “Now,” he sighs, pleased, “I will take you to bed.”

They’ve scarcely reached the top of the stairs before Will’s palms skim soft along Hannibal’s hips. He draws a breath as Hannibal turns to him, catching his face in broad hands to pull him near. Will smiles a little, as their mouths move together, eyes closing to let himself feel this alone, the taste and movement of it. Slowly stepping forward into the kiss, until the bed comes up behind Hannibal’s legs and he sits on the edge of it.

Will’s eyes are dark already, pupils wide as he tugs his shirt free to drop on the floor and stands between Hannibal’s legs, pressed close against him. His tongue appears briefly to wet his lips, a flicker of nerves as he remembers his scar made obvious now, but just as quickly, Will notes that he had to _remember_ his scar, and for a few moments had forgotten it entirely.

Walls rebuilding, but lower and lower each time they’re brought down.

He runs a hand through Hannibal’s hair and grasps softly against the back of his head, watching him with lips parted in a curious observation. And Hannibal watches him, eyes up and utterly attentive to every shift and every motion. Watching the doubt flit across Will’s face and vanish, watching the want and need filter in behind his eyes, the rest overshadowed by the affection that tilts his smile.

He leans back, just enough, into Will’s hand, before turning his head to catch the soft wrist beneath his lips, eyes closing as he kisses there, follows the warm pulse up his arm to the crook of his elbow, the motion bringing Will closer to him, one step. Will’s hand comes out for balance, leans his weight against Hanniball’s shoulder as Will moves to set his knees on either side of Hannibal’s legs in a casual straddle, and Hannibal’s lips move to his neck as hands skim warm down Will’s sides.

A breath of laughter, as Will loses his balance a little, throwing a hand out to catch himself on the bed. He leans low over Hannibal, whose arms move to wrap around him and pull him closer still. Steadily pressing downward Hannibal’s mouth lingers long against Will’s chest, tasting him and the quickened beating of his heart.

Will sighs, soft, and snares his fingers in Hannibal’s hair again. A gentle push forward back onto the bed that Hannibal executes with a grace that tightens the warm coil in Will’s stomach even more as he slides his knees up onto the bed to follow. Still pressed tight, nothing but warmth and soft gasps between their kisses when Will meets his lips again and again, desperate little kisses building with the speeding of his pulse.

It’s been so long. Will’s hands move ravenous along Hannibal’s body, beneath the threadbare shirt he took from Will’s closet, devouring with curled fingers and scrapes of nails the way that Hannibal’s body has changed.

This hunger, this clawing and claiming and underlying danger of Will, this Hannibal has missed. The affection, the soft words and nuzzling, sleepy mornings and wakeful nights. This is Will to him.

This is everything. 

He takes it, draws his hands hot up Will’s back to curl over his shoulders, moves one higher to splay in Will's hair and _tug_ , enough to bring Will to him, hot mouths and low sounds.

Will bends easily beneath the pull, lets himself be moved as only Hannibal has ever been able to move him, as only Hannibal has ever been able to draw a vocal gasp with a pull of fingernails against his back, as only Hannibal has ever made his entire body and mind come into utter absorption of another, into another.

“I’ve fucking missed you,” Will swears in a rough whisper. He lays atop him with legs splayed to either side of his hips and watches through hooded eyes, unable to let them close for want of taking that, too, the sight of Hannibal watching him as though no other exists on earth. Will knows it’s true for them both, and he moans a soft, aching whimper as he drags a hand down Hannibal’s stomach to slide beneath the waistband of his pants.

He grasps Hannibal firmly, feels the flushed heat of his length and sighs again when sparks erupt in goosebumps along his skin, a sensation just as vivid as though it were himself being stroked in slow, firm tugs to feel Hannibal harden even more in his fingers.

A breath, long and pulling a sound with it parts Hannibal’s lips and he surrenders. Will’s words hum through him like the residual vibrations in a bell, pulling at him, cloying. He keeps his hands moving, quick fingers, so deft at undoing Will now at his mercy, drawing swathes of warmth across his shoulders, down his back, his sides. He hooks his fingers under Will’s ass, against the curve where the thighs join, and tugs him up.

Closer, harder, hotter.

_You. Here. Now._

"Oh, Will..."

A low groan surges from Will, to hear his name said in such a way, to feel it pressed against his skin, every nerve alight after days, months, years of being forcefully blunted.

“Again,” Will insists, kissing heat to Hannibal’s neck, to his collarbones, before snaring his shirt in both hands to pry it roughly from him.

No destruction in this fire, but a consuming immolation.

His mouth returns to Hannibal’s chest as soon as the shirt is tossed aside and he works his way lower, lingering on every scar that he has yet to see. Two round marks in his chest, one beneath his ribs, and one against the side of his stomach. Fingers chase the sweep of his tongue, to add this to the new sensations firing fast in his mind, no apology in his ministrations but rather a fierce acknowledgement.

It’s exquisite, this exploration, this slow, deliberate learning of him as Hannibal had so often learned Will. He wonders if Will has allowed himself to slip into his mind for this, to let the pendulum swing not for horrors but for the opposite, for the pleasure and heat and sensation he pulls from Hannibal with clever hands and a hot mouth.

Hannibal licks his lips, dropping his head for just a moment to softly moan Will’s name again, just as low, as hungry and breathless as before. He sucks his stomach in when Will’s lips brush against the old scars. They no longer hurt, he suspects that his scars had healed sensitive, as had Will’s, barely stinging with the sensation of electricity and the throbbing of his heart.

Will lets each kiss linger long, pressed against Hannibal's skin. To feel the heat of him, the movement of his muscles, to taste the sweat gathering on his skin in the early morning humidity and to watch Hannibal, watching him. He shivers at a curl of nails in his hair, a shudder that runs from his neck up to the crown of his head, and gasps against the soft hairs just above Hannibal's waistband. Tugging it lower, Will breathes a long sigh against Hannibal's cock as it falls to rest hard against his stomach.

His fingers graze across the soft skin, followed by his tongue, and Will moans gently as he feels Hannibal's pulse against his mouth. A tension twists pleasantly inside him, another noise pushed from between his lips as he wraps them softly around Hannibal, grasping him firmly.

A groan, low and barely stable. This is something that was always rare between them, perhaps not even for preference but because it simply led elsewhere when their lips came together and hands shifted. It is no less hypnotic, watching Will’s lips part, the red of his tongue barely visible against the corner of his mouth as he works at bringing Hannibal closer, without fully taking him in.

It’s torture.

It’s a gift.

And Hannibal arches, draws his knees up around Will and bends his back to push down against his mouth.

“Yes…” the sibilant dragged out in another hiss of pleasure.

He knows that Hannibal has ached for him in particular, but also that he has been without, wanting, for contact at all far longer than Will has. And this different enough from what Will experienced in that time, this for Hannibal alone.

A thanks, of sorts, better expressed through action than through words, and Will's mind moving quickly enough that he feels it almost against his own skin just as readily. Will takes Hannibal into his mouth with a soft sound of surprise, lips wrapping against his skin for him to suck firm, slow little pulls against the head. Another sound, from deeper in Will's throat, as he tastes the salt and sweat of Hannibal against his tongue, pressing it against him.

He pushes lower, eyes still alight upward as he watches Hannibal arch for him - for him, and no other - and he slides a hand against Hannibal's stomach to feel the tension that pulls him upwards.

Drawing away to breathe, heart tripping faster against his ribs, Will grins just a little.

"Again," he whispers, breath cooling fast against Hannibal's cock. "Call my name for me."

And just as quickly Hannibal is plunged back into warmth, dampness, when Will relaxes his jaw to allow Hannibal a little deeper still. His tongue bucks, a faint choke, but it's the only beat he misses before Will starts to work in slow, sucking rhythm against him.

The pull and tug against his skin echoes the tripping of Hannibal’s heart against his ribs, against his throat… this hunger is new, this hunger is feral and hot and uncontrollable. It spreads like a fire, consuming and renewing and leaving destruction and beauty in its wake.

Hannibal can’t deny him.

Doesn’t want to.

Will’s name falls from his lips, in soft syllables then louder, voice strained, words mingled with soft pleas and gentle warmth, encouraging and pleased as one hand settles against Will’s jaw to feel it work, the other pressed to Hannibal’s eyes to cement this sensation in his mind. He glances upward, and slowly - carefully - takes Hannibal as deeply as he can before he gags with a soft clicking noise and then draws him shallower again, to resume his previous rhythm.

Will hears the voices in the back of his head, familiar but belonging to no one in particular. After everything, they whisper. After all the murders, after laying waste to so many lives, and so many lost in an effort to break free and reach _you_. After everything he's done to you, after everything he's stripped from your life and body and mind. After everything...

And when he sees Hannibal bend, hips rolling, and when he sees Hannibal with his hand over his face and his lips parted to sigh Will's name shaking past them, Will knows without doubt that the only answer he holds for those voices is _yes_.

Will wants is this, here and now, between them. A joining of pulse and blood and skin and sweat that allows them to feel physically the way their minds already work, with a clarity of understanding that leaves neither wanting.

After everything, _yes_.

He dips lower again, not to bring Hannibal into his throat as he's felt Hannibal do to him - wise enough to know better than to try - but squeezing his hand and stroking to meet his lips, shivering at the heavy pulse against his tongue, at the saltiness he tastes dripping against the back of his mouth.

This, here and now.

It’s rare Hannibal allows himself this much vulnerability, with very few people. It had been, initially, that he had coveted Will’s vulnerability, his gentleness, his empathy. He saw it as a gift, rare and something to be honed, something he had to possess but could never absorb. He had worshipped it in Will, nourished it, fed it with insecurities and pain. Then with affection and devotion, closeness and love, and the vulnerability grew to be a creature that slid between them. From mouths and fingertips and sweaty skin. And Hannibal became the vulnerability he had coveted, he became the thing he had desired, and now he felt Will’s same urge to share it, to have it seen and loved and protected.

He parts his lips in a gentle stretch and presses his teeth together after, a low sound escaping him.

Will works against him as no one else had or would - no one else Hannibal would allow it, he has no need for another.

“Will, please…”

The tension gathering in Will’s stomach snaps tight and he hums against Hannibal’s sensitive skin at the words and the sweet desperation that snares them soft and shuddering, pleading with Will, for Will to give Hannibal release.

Will feels a particular understanding, now, at why Hannibal has always been so enthusiastic for Will to whimper and keen and twist and bend beneath him. It’s intoxicating to feel Hannibal so given over - to relinquish all his control and simply _feel_. Will knows that abandon well, but to see Hannibal undone with it makes Will’s pulse rush hot in his ears as he moves a little faster now, tongue pressing against Hannibal’s pulse and lips curving tighter to seal against him, throat working in soft swallows and little sounds.

It’s almost too much, and Hannibal grits his teeth and rides it out, feeling the warm coil in his belly, the familiar thrum of his heart in his ears that suggests that he is close _so close, almost_ …

He slides his hand from his eyes, forces his back to curl to see Will do this, to watch his lips and his eyes and the hair messy over his face as he sucks deeper, strokes up where he can’t swallow and it’s enough. Hannibal’s back goes rigid, sharp and tight in pleasure and he groans, low and quick, before falling back to bed again, body shaking and arching and pushing in pleasure.

He murmurs something that could be a curse word, could be an affirmation, affection, it hardly matters, Will doesn’t know the language, but the fact that he’s set Hannibal’s mind far enough to seek words their shared languages could not cover makes him grin as he pulls away, flushed and happy and _proud_.

He’d done this, him alone, and Hannibal had let him.

He goes when Hannibal tugs him, a sharp yank to pull him unbalanced over the bed again, and kisses him, his release still salty-bitter on Will’s lips, a unique, unforgettable taste.

Will teases his tongue along his own lips, draws each briefly between his teeth, to taste Hannibal there until there's nothing more to taste. A deep pleasure flushes beneath his beard, down the curves of his throat, and he grins against Hannibal's neck, kissing his pulse and settling in above him - warm, comfortable, and still hard but seemingly mindless of the fact in the lingering waves of Hannibal's pleasure that he feels cresting softly through him.

"I haven't done that before," Will remarks mildly, as though he were still discussing French toast.

He rocks his hips only softly down against Hannibal, to feel the friction between his boxers and Hannibal's skin, and kisses him, a gentle thing touched to the corner of his mouth. Pleased enough with this closeness, content enough simply to feel himself held near and to absorb the adoration of Hannibal's breath warm against his cheek.

“I hope you do it again.” Hannibal murmurs, amused and satisfied to just hold Will against him, to feel his heart and his heat against him, to feel how hard he still is when Hannibal himself is spent. It’s an unusual juxtaposition, a reminder of certain cold mornings in Wolf Trap. Pleasant and charged and exhausting.

Hannibal hums, turns his head to kiss Will’s hair gently. His hands venture down to tug him close again, setting his foot against the bed to push them both up higher, to lie comfortably across it. He draws his legs up, sets them to rest against within the spread of Will’s, ankles against Will’s inner calves, an easy tangle.

“And we have the entire day for you to remember I’m yours.” His eyes are barely open, not sleepy but utterly sated, happy, finally contented to be somewhere.

Will considers this, fingers grazing soft down Hannibal’s cheek as they lie facing, drawn as close to each other as they could be. He presses their foreheads together. A gentle nuzzle, lips brushing.

“And not just today.”

A statement. A question.

Hope.

Soon enough, Will will turn to Hannibal again and press more insistently against him. Seeking contact, release, between his thighs and in sighs against his mouth. Seeking the constancy of Hannibal’s heart against his own, the reassurance of becoming whole again after so much time wasted between them in acts of possession and misunderstanding, ego and pride. Each year, month, day, hour, minute that they were separated to be accounted for, each moment of seven years that might have been theirs, then, now theirs, again.

But for now, Will settles. He draws himself alongside Hannibal and with gentle touches and gentler words relearns him, as he himself is relearned in kind. Content for now not to be consumed in ardor or in sleep, but to simply stay still, together, and breathe.


End file.
